in an important position of responsibility with the
St. Paul Public Library, in which city Dr. “Will”
had the good fortune to meet her. The city of
Gopher Prairie welcomes her to our midst and prophesies
for her many happy years in the energetic city of
the twin lakes and the future. The Dr. and Mrs.
Kennicott will reside for the present at the Doctor’s
home on Poplar Street which his charming mother has
been keeping for him who has now returned to her own
home at Lac-qui-Meurt leaving a host of friends who
regret her absence and hope to see her soon with us
again.
She knew that if she was ever to effect any of the
“reforms” which she had pictured, she
must have a starting-place. What confused her
during the three or four months after her marriage
was not lack of perception that she must be definite,
but sheer careless happiness of her first home.
In the pride of being a housewife she loved every
detail—the brocade armchair with the weak
back, even the brass water-cock on the hot-water reservoir,
when she had become familiar with it by trying to scour
it to brilliance.
She found a maid—plump radiant Bea Sorenson
from Scandia Crossing. Bea was droll in her attempt
to be at once a respectful servant and a bosom friend.
They laughed together over the fact that the stove
did not draw, over the slipperiness of fish in the
pan.
Like a child playing Grandma in a trailing skirt,
Carol paraded uptown for her marketing, crying greetings
to housewives along the way. Everybody bowed
to her, strangers and all, and made her feel that they
wanted her, that she belonged here. In city shops
she was merely A Customer—a hat, a voice
to bore a harassed clerk. Here she was Mrs. Doc
Kennicott, and her preferences in grape-fruit and manners
were known and remembered and worth discussing . .
. even if they weren’t worth fulfilling.
Shopping was a delight of brisk conferences.
The very merchants whose droning she found the dullest
at the two or three parties which were given to welcome
her were the pleasantest confidants of all when they
had something to talk about—lemons or cotton
voile or floor-oil. With that skip-jack Dave
Dyer, the druggist, she conducted a long mock-quarrel.
She pretended that he cheated her in the price of
magazines and candy; he pretended she was a detective
from the Twin Cities. He hid behind the prescription-counter,
and when she stamped her foot he came out wailing,
“Honest, I haven’t done nothing crooked
today—not yet.”
She never recalled her first impression of Main Street;
never had precisely the same despair at its ugliness.
By the end of two shopping-tours everything had changed
proportions. As she never entered it, the Minniemashie
House ceased to exist for her. Clark’s Hardware
Store, Dyer’s Drug Store, the groceries of Ole
Jenson and Frederick Ludelmeyer and Howland & Gould,
the meat markets, the notions shop—they
expanded, and hid all other structures. When she
entered Mr. Ludelmeyer’s store and he wheezed,
“Goot mornin’, Mrs. Kennicott. Vell,
dis iss a fine day,” she did not notice the dustiness
of the shelves nor the stupidity of the girl clerk;
and she did not remember the mute colloquy with him
on her first view of Main Street.
