She could not find half the kinds of food she wanted,
but that made shopping more of an adventure.
When she did contrive to get sweetbreads at Dahl &
Oleson’s Meat Market the triumph was so vast
that she buzzed with excitement and admired the strong
wise butcher, Mr. Dahl.
She appreciated the homely ease of village life.
She liked the old men, farmers, G.A.R. veterans, who
when they gossiped sometimes squatted on their heels
on the sidewalk, like resting Indians, and reflectively
spat over the curb.
She found beauty in the children.
She had suspected that her married friends exaggerated
their passion for children. But in her work in
the library, children had become individuals to her,
citizens of the State with their own rights and their
own senses of humor. In the library she had not
had much time to give them, but now she knew the luxury
of stopping, gravely asking Bessie Clark whether her
doll had yet recovered from its rheumatism, and agreeing
with Oscar Martinsen that it would be Good Fun to go
trapping “mushrats.”
She touched the thought, “It would be sweet
to have a baby of my own. I do want one.
Tiny——No! Not yet! There’s
so much to do. And I’m still tired from
the job. It’s in my bones.”
She rested at home. She listened to the village
noises common to all the world, jungle or prairie;
sounds simple and charged with magic—dogs
barking, chickens making a gurgling sound of content,
children at play, a man beating a rug, wind in the
cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling, a footstep on
the walk, jaunty voices of Bea and a grocer’s
boy in the kitchen, a clinking anvil, a piano—not
too near.
Twice a week, at least, she drove into the country
with Kennicott, to hunt ducks in lakes enameled with
sunset, or to call on patients who looked up to her
as the squire’s lady and thanked her for toys
and magazines. Evenings she went with her husband
to the motion pictures and was boisterously greeted
by every other couple; or, till it became too cold,
they sat on the porch, bawling to passers-by in motors,
or to neighbors who were raking the leaves. The
dust became golden in the low sun; the street was
filled with the fragrance of burning leaves.
But she hazily wanted some one to whom she could say
what she thought.
On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing
and wished that the telephone would ring, Bea announced
Miss Vida Sherwin.
Despite Vida Sherwin’s lively blue eyes, if
you had looked at her in detail you would have found
her face slightly lined, and not so much sallow as
with the bloom rubbed off; you would have found her
chest flat, and her fingers rough from needle and
chalk and penholder; her blouses and plain cloth skirts
undistinguished; and her hat worn too far back, betraying
a dry forehead. But you never did look at Vida
Sherwin in detail. You couldn’t. Her
electric activity veiled her. She was as energetic
as a chipmunk. Her fingers fluttered; her sympathy
came out in spurts; she sat on the edge of a chair
in eagerness to be near her auditor, to send her enthusiasms
and optimism across.
