But the man looked at her reassuringly and with a
certainty that he was a person whom she could trust
she confessed, “As a matter of fact I haven’t
got anybody straight.”
“Course you haven’t, child. Well,
I’m Sam Clark, dealer in hardware, sporting
goods, cream separators, and almost any kind of heavy
junk you can think of. You can call me Sam—anyway,
I’m going to call you Carrie, seein’ ’s
you’ve been and gone and married this poor fish
of a bum medic that we keep round here.”
Carol smiled lavishly, and wished that she called
people by their given names more easily. “The
fat cranky lady back there beside you, who is pretending
that she can’t hear me giving her away, is Mrs.
Sam’l Clark; and this hungry-looking squirt up
here beside me is Dave Dyer, who keeps his drug store
running by not filling your hubby’s prescriptions
right—fact you might say he’s the
guy that put the ‘shun’ in ‘prescription.’
So! Well, leave us take the bonny bride home.
Say, doc, I’ll sell you the Candersen place for
three thousand plunks. Better be thinking about
building a new home for Carrie. Prettiest Frau
in G. P., if you asks me!”
Contentedly Sam Clark drove off, in the heavy traffic
of three Fords and the Minniemashie House Free ’Bus.
“I shall like Mr. Clark . . . I can’t
call him ‘Sam’! They’re all
so friendly.” She glanced at the houses;
tried not to see what she saw; gave way in: “Why
do these stories lie so? They always make the
bride’s home-coming a bower of roses. Complete
trust in noble spouse. Lies about marriage.
I’m not changed. And this town—O
my God! I can’t go through with it.
This junk-heap!”
Her husband bent over her. “You look like
you were in a brown study. Scared? I don’t
expect you to think Gopher Prairie is a paradise, after
St. Paul. I don’t expect you to be crazy
about it, at first. But you’ll come to
like it so much—life’s so free here
and best people on earth.”
She whispered to him (while Mrs. Clark considerately
turned away), “I love you for understanding.
I’m just—I’m beastly over-sensitive.
Too many books. It’s my lack of shoulder-muscles
and sense. Give me time, dear.”
“You bet! All the time you want!”
She laid the back of his hand against her cheek, snuggled
near him. She was ready for her new home.
Kennicott had told her that, with his widowed mother
as housekeeper, he had occupied an old house, “but
nice and roomy, and well-heated, best furnace I could
find on the market.” His mother had left
Carol her love, and gone back to Lac-qui-Meurt.
It would be wonderful, she exulted, not to have to
live in Other People’s Houses, but to make her
own shrine. She held his hand tightly and stared
ahead as the car swung round a corner and stopped in
the street before a prosaic frame house in a small
parched lawn.
