Thus he was able to buy a quarter-section of land
for one hundred and fifty dollars an acre, and to
sell it in a year or two, after installing a cement
floor in the barn and running water in the house, for
one hundred and eighty or even two hundred.
He spoke of these details to Sam Clark . . . rather
often.
In all his games, cars and guns and land, he expected
Carol to take an interest. But he did not give
her the facts which might have created interest.
He talked only of the obvious and tedious aspects;
never of his aspirations in finance, nor of the mechanical
principles of motors.
This month of romance she was eager to understand
his hobbies. She shivered in the garage while
he spent half an hour in deciding whether to put alcohol
or patent non-freezing liquid into the radiator, or
to drain out the water entirely. “Or no,
then I wouldn’t want to take her out if it turned
warm—still, of course, I could fill the
radiator again—wouldn’t take so awful
long—just take a few pails of water—still,
if it turned cold on me again before I drained it——Course
there’s some people that put in kerosene, but
they say it rots the hose-connections and——Where
did I put that lug-wrench?”
It was at this point that she gave up being a motorist
and retired to the house.
In their new intimacy he was more communicative about
his practise; he informed her, with the invariable
warning not to tell, that Mrs. Sunderquist had another
baby coming, that the “hired girl at Howland’s
was in trouble.” But when she asked technical
questions he did not know how to answer; when she
inquired, “Exactly what is the method of taking
out the tonsils?” he yawned, “Tonsilectomy?
Why you just——If there’s pus,
you operate. Just take ’em out. Seen
the newspaper? What the devil did Bea do with
it?”
She did not try again.
They had gone to the “movies.” The
movies were almost as vital to Kennicott and the other
solid citizens of Gopher Prairie as land-speculation
and guns and automobiles.
The feature film portrayed a brave young Yankee who
conquered a South American republic. He turned
the natives from their barbarous habits of singing
and laughing to the vigorous sanity, the Pep and Punch
and Go, of the North; he taught them to work in factories,
to wear Klassy Kollege Klothes, and to shout, “Oh,
you baby doll, watch me gather in the mazuma.”
He changed nature itself. A mountain which had
borne nothing but lilies and cedars and loafing clouds
was by his Hustle so inspirited that it broke out
in long wooden sheds, and piles of iron ore to be
converted into steamers to carry iron ore to be converted
into steamers to carry iron ore.
