Carol went to view the old building. The grades
and the high school were combined in a damp yellow-brick
structure with the narrow windows of an antiquated
jail—a hulk which expressed hatred and compulsory
training. She conceded Mrs. Mott’s demand
so violently that for two days she dropped her own
campaign. Then she built the school and city hall
together, as the center of the reborn town.
She ventured to the lead-colored dwelling of Mrs.
Dave Dyer. Behind the mask of winter-stripped
vines and a wide porch only a foot above the ground,
the cottage was so impersonal that Carol could never
visualize it. Nor could she remember anything
that was inside it. But Mrs. Dyer was personal
enough. With Carol, Mrs. Howland, Mrs. McGanum,
and Vida Sherwin she was a link between the Jolly
Seventeen and the serious Thanatopsis (in contrast
to Juanita Haydock, who unnecessarily boasted of being
a “lowbrow” and publicly stated that she
would “see herself in jail before she’d
write any darned old club papers"). Mrs. Dyer
was superfeminine in the kimono in which she received
Carol. Her skin was fine, pale, soft, suggesting
a weak voluptuousness. At afternoon-coffees she
had been rude but now she addressed Carol as “dear,”
and insisted on being called Maud. Carol did
not quite know why she was uncomfortable in this talcum-powder
atmosphere, but she hastened to get into the fresh
air of her plans.
Maud Dyer granted that the city hall wasn’t
“so very nice,” yet, as Dave said, there
was no use doing anything about it till they received
an appropriation from the state and combined a new
city hall with a national guard armory. Dave
had given verdict, “What these mouthy youngsters
that hang around the pool-room need is universal military
training. Make men of ’em.”
Mrs. Dyer removed the new schoolbuilding from the
city hall:
“Oh, so Mrs. Mott has got you going on her school
craze! She’s been dinging at that till
everybody’s sick and tired. What she really
wants is a big office for her dear bald-headed Gawge
to sit around and look important in. Of course
I admire Mrs. Mott, and I’m very fond of her,
she’s so brainy, even if she does try to butt
in and run the Thanatopsis, but I must say we’re
sick of her nagging. The old building was good
enough for us when we were kids! I hate these
would-be women politicians, don’t you?”
IV
The first week of March had given promise of spring
and stirred Carol with a thousand desires for lakes
and fields and roads. The snow was gone except
for filthy woolly patches under trees, the thermometer
leaped in a day from wind-bitten chill to itchy warmth.
As soon as Carol was convinced that even in this imprisoned
North, spring could exist again, the snow came down
as abruptly as a paper storm in a theater; the northwest
gale flung it up in a half blizzard; and with her hope
of a glorified town went hope of summer meadows.
