t servants belong to
a distinct and inferior species. But she discovered that Bea was
extraordinarily like girls she had loved in college, and as a companion
altogether superior to the young matrons of the Jolly Seventeen. Daily
they became more frankly two girls playing at housework. Bea artlessly
considered Carol the most beautiful and accomplished lady in the
country; she was always shrieking, "My, dot's a swell hat!" or, "Ay
t'ink all dese ladies yoost die when dey see how elegant you do your
hair!" But it was not the humbleness of a servant, nor the hypocrisy of
a slave; it was the admiration of Freshman for Junior.

They made out the day's menus together. Though they began with
propriety, Carol sitting by the kitchen table and Bea at the sink or
blacking the stove, the conference was likely to end with both of them
by the table, while Bea gurgled over the ice-man's attempt to kiss her,
or Carol admitted, "Everybody knows that the doctor is lots more clever
than Dr. McGanum." When Carol came in from marketing, Bea plunged into
the hall to take off her coat, rub her frostied hands, and ask, "Vos
dere lots of folks up-town today?"

This was the welcome upon which Carol depended.

VI

Through her weeks of cowering there was no change in her surface life.
No one save Vida was aware of her agonizing. On her most despairing
days she chatted to women on the street, in stores. But without
the protection of Kennicott's presence she did not go to the Jolly
Seventeen; she delivered herself to the judgment of the town only when
she went shopping and on the ritualistic occasions of formal afternoon
calls, when Mrs. Lyman Cass or Mrs. George Edwin Mott, with clean gloves
and minute handkerchiefs and sealskin card-cases and countenances of
frozen approbation, sat on the edges of chairs and inquired, "Do you
find Gopher Prairie pleasing?" When they spent evenings of social
profit-and-loss at the Haydocks' or the Dyers' she hid behind Kennicott,
playing the simple bride.

Now she was unprotected. Kennicott had taken a patient to Rochester
for an operation. He would be away for two or three days. She had not
minded; she would loosen the matrimonial tension and be a fanciful girl
for a time. But now that he was gone the house was listeningly empty.
Bea was out this afternoon--presumably drinking coffee and talking about
"fellows" with her cousin Tina. It was the day for the monthly supper
and evening-bridge of the Jolly Sev