“Fine! We need a hostess for the seventeenth
of March. Wouldn’t it be awfully original
if you made it a St. Patrick’s Day bridge!
I’ll be tickled to death to help you with it.
I’m glad you’ve learned to play bridge.
At first I didn’t hardly know if you were going
to like Gopher Prairie. Isn’t it dandy
that you’ve settled down to being homey with
us! Maybe we aren’t as highbrow as the
Cities, but we do have the daisiest times and—oh,
we go swimming in summer, and dances and—oh,
lots of good times. If folks will just take us
as we are, I think we’re a pretty good bunch!”
“I’m sure of it. Thank you so much
for the idea about having a St. Patrick’s Day
bridge.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. I always think
the Jolly Seventeen are so good at original ideas.
If you knew these other towns Wakamin and Joralemon
and all, you’d find out and realize that G.
P. is the liveliest, smartest town in the state.
Did you know that Percy Bresnahan, the famous auto
manufacturer, came from here and——Yes,
I think that a St. Patrick’s Day party would
be awfully cunning and original, and yet not too queer
or freaky or anything.”
She had often been invited to the weekly meetings
of the Thanatopsis, the women’s study club,
but she had put it off. The Thanatopsis was,
Vida Sherwin promised, “such a cozy group, and
yet it puts you in touch with all the intellectual
thoughts that are going on everywhere.”
Early in March Mrs. Westlake, wife of the veteran
physician, marched into Carol’s living-room
like an amiable old pussy and suggested, “My
dear, you really must come to the Thanatopsis this
afternoon. Mrs. Dawson is going to be leader
and the poor soul is frightened to death. She
wanted me to get you to come. She says she’s
sure you will brighten up the meeting with your knowledge
of books and writings. (English poetry is our topic
today.) So shoo! Put on your coat!”
“English poetry? Really? I’d
love to go. I didn’t realize you were reading
poetry.”
“Oh, we’re not so slow!”
Mrs. Luke Dawson, wife of the richest man in town,
gaped at them piteously when they appeared. Her
expensive frock of beaver-colored satin with rows,
plasters, and pendants of solemn brown beads was intended
for a woman twice her size. She stood wringing
her hands in front of nineteen folding chairs, in
her front parlor with its faded photograph of Minnehaha
Falls in 1890, its “colored enlargement”
of Mr. Dawson, its bulbous lamp painted with sepia
cows and mountains and standing on a mortuary marble
column.
She creaked, “O Mrs. Kennicott, I’m in
such a fix. I’m supposed to lead the discussion,
and I wondered would you come and help?”
“What poet do you take up today?” demanded
Carol, in her library tone of “What book do
you wish to take out?”
