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.