Carol forswore herself; declared that Gopher Prairie
had the color of Algiers and the gaiety of Mardi Gras.
Yet the next afternoon she was pouncing on Mrs. Lyman
Cass, the hook-nosed consort of the owner of the flour-mill.
Mrs. Cass’s parlor belonged to the crammed-Victorian
school, as Mrs. Luke Dawson’s belonged to the
bare-Victorian. It was furnished on two principles:
First, everything must resemble something else.
A rocker had a back like a lyre, a near-leather seat
imitating tufted cloth, and arms like Scotch Presbyterian
lions; with knobs, scrolls, shields, and spear-points
on unexpected portions of the chair. The second
principle of the crammed-Victorian school was that
every inch of the interior must be filled with useless
objects.
The walls of Mrs. Cass’s parlor were plastered
with “hand-painted” pictures, “buckeye”
pictures, of birch-trees, news-boys, puppies, and
church-steeples on Christmas Eve; with a plaque depicting
the Exposition Building in Minneapolis, burnt-wood
portraits of Indian chiefs of no tribe in particular,
a pansy-decked poetic motto, a Yard of Roses, and
the banners of the educational institutions attended
by the Casses’ two sons—Chicopee
Falls Business College and McGillicuddy University.
One small square table contained a card-receiver of
painted china with a rim of wrought and gilded lead,
a Family Bible, Grant’s Memoirs, the latest
novel by Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter, a wooden model
of a Swiss chalet which was also a bank for dimes,
a polished abalone shell holding one black-headed
pin and one empty spool, a velvet pin-cushion in a
gilded metal slipper with “Souvenir of Troy,
N. Y.” stamped on the toe, and an unexplained
red glass dish which had warts.
Mrs. Cass’s first remark was, “I must
show you all my pretty things and art objects.”
She piped, after Carol’s appeal:
“I see. You think the New England villages
and Colonial houses are so much more cunning than
these Middlewestern towns. I’m glad you
feel that way. You’ll be interested to
know I was born in Vermont.”
“And don’t you think we ought to try to
make Gopher Prai——”
“My gracious no! We can’t afford
it. Taxes are much too high as it is. We
ought to retrench, and not let the city council spend
another cent. Uh——Don’t
you think that was a grand paper Mrs. Westlake read
about Tolstoy? I was so glad she pointed out
how all his silly socialistic ideas failed.”
What Mrs. Cass said was what Kennicott said, that
evening. Not in twenty years would the council
propose or Gopher Prairie vote the funds for a new
city hall.
Carol had avoided exposing her plans to Vida Sherwin.
She was shy of the big-sister manner; Vida would either
laugh at her or snatch the idea and change it to suit
herself. But there was no other hope. When
Vida came in to tea Carol sketched her Utopia.
