During her three years of library work several men
showed diligent interest in her—the treasurer
of a fur-manufacturing firm, a teacher, a newspaper
reporter, and a petty railroad official. None
of them made her more than pause in thought.
For months no male emerged from the mass. Then,
at the Marburys’, she met Dr. Will Kennicott.
It was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who
trotted to the flat of the Johnson Marburys for Sunday
evening supper. Mrs. Marbury was a neighbor and
friend of Carol’s sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling
representative of an insurance company. They
made a specialty of sandwich-salad-coffee lap suppers,
and they regarded Carol as their literary and artistic
representative. She was the one who could be depended
upon to appreciate the Caruso phonograph record, and
the Chinese lantern which Mr. Marbury had brought
back as his present from San Francisco. Carol
found the Marburys admiring and therefore admirable.
This September Sunday evening she wore a net frock
with a pale pink lining. A nap had soothed away
the faint lines of tiredness beside her eyes.
She was young, naive, stimulated by the coolness.
She flung her coat at the chair in the hall of the
flat, and exploded into the green-plush living-room.
The familiar group were trying to be conversational.
She saw Mr. Marbury, a woman teacher of gymnastics
in a high school, a chief clerk from the Great Northern
Railway offices, a young lawyer. But there was
also a stranger, a thick tall man of thirty-six or
-seven, with stolid brown hair, lips used to giving
orders, eyes which followed everything good-naturedly,
and clothes which you could never quite remember.
Mr. Marbury boomed, “Carol, come over here and
meet Doc Kennicott—Dr. Will Kennicott of
Gopher Prairie. He does all our insurance-examining
up in that neck of the woods, and they do say he’s
some doctor!”
As she edged toward the stranger and murmured nothing
in particular, Carol remembered that Gopher Prairie
was a Minnesota wheat-prairie town of something over
three thousand people.
“Pleased to meet you,” stated Dr. Kennicott.
His hand was strong; the palm soft, but the back weathered,
showing golden hairs against firm red skin.
He looked at her as though she was an agreeable discovery.
She tugged her hand free and fluttered, “I must
go out to the kitchen and help Mrs. Marbury.”
She did not speak to him again till, after she had
heated the rolls and passed the paper napkins, Mr.
Marbury captured her with a loud, “Oh, quit
fussing now. Come over here and sit down and tell
us how’s tricks.” He herded her to
a sofa with Dr. Kennicott, who was rather vague about
the eyes, rather drooping of bulky shoulder, as though
he was wondering what he was expected to do next.
As their host left them, Kennicott awoke:
“Marbury tells me you’re a high mogul
in the public library. I was surprised.
Didn’t hardly think you were old enough.
I thought you were a girl, still in college maybe.”
