While Kennicott labored over ordering it was annoying
to see him permit the waiter to be impertinent, but
as the cocktail elevated her to a bridge among colored
stars, as the oysters came in—not canned
oysters in the Gopher Prairie fashion, but on the
half-shell—she cried, “If you only
knew how wonderful it is not to have had to plan this
dinner, and order it at the butcher’s and fuss
and think about it, and then watch Bea cook it!
I feel so free. And to have new kinds of food,
and different patterns of dishes and linen, and not
worry about whether the pudding is being spoiled!
Oh, this is a great moment for me!”
IV
They had all the experiences of provincials in a metropolis.
After breakfast Carol bustled to a hair-dresser’s,
bought gloves and a blouse, and importantly met Kennicott
in front of an optician’s, in accordance with
plans laid down, revised, and verified. They admired
the diamonds and furs and frosty silverware and mahogany
chairs and polished morocco sewing-boxes in shop-windows,
and were abashed by the throngs in the department-stores,
and were bullied by a clerk into buying too many shirts
for Kennicott, and gaped at the “clever novelty
perfumes—just in from New York.”
Carol got three books on the theater, and spent an
exultant hour in warning herself that she could not
afford this rajah-silk frock, in thinking how envious
it would make Juanita Haydock, in closing her eyes,
and buying it. Kennicott went from shop to shop,
earnestly hunting down a felt-covered device to keep
the windshield of his car clear of rain.
They dined extravagantly at their hotel at night,
and next morning sneaked round the corner to economize
at a Childs’ Restaurant. They were tired
by three in the afternoon, and dozed at the motion-pictures
and said they wished they were back in Gopher Prairie—and
by eleven in the evening they were again so lively
that they went to a Chinese restaurant that was frequented
by clerks and their sweethearts on pay-days. They
sat at a teak and marble table eating Eggs Fooyung,
and listened to a brassy automatic piano, and were
altogether cosmopolitan.
On the street they met people from home—the
McGanums. They laughed, shook hands repeatedly,
and exclaimed, “Well, this is quite a coincidence!”
They asked when the McGanums had come down, and begged
for news of the town they had left two days before.
Whatever the McGanums were at home, here they stood
out as so superior to all the undistinguishable strangers
absurdly hurrying past that the Kennicotts held them
as long as they could. The McGanums said good-by
as though they were going to Tibet instead of to the
station to catch No. 7 north.
