se if he were like Sam Clark--insisted on having
children," she considered; then, "If Will were the Prince, wouldn't I
DEMAND his child?"

Kennicott's land-deals were both financial advancement and favorite
game. Driving through the country, he noticed which farms had good
crops; he heard the news about the restless farmer who was "thinking
about selling out here and pulling his freight for Alberta." He asked
the veterinarian about the value of different breeds of stock; he
inquired of Lyman Cass whether or not Einar Gyseldson really had had a
yield of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He was always consulting
Julius Flickerbaugh, who handled more real estate than law, and more law
than justice. He studied township maps, and read notices of auctions.

Thus he was able to buy a quarter-section of land for one hundred and
fifty dollars an acre, and to sell it in a year or two, after installing
a cement floor in the barn and running water in the house, for one
hundred and eighty or even two hundred.

He spoke of these details to Sam Clark . . . rather often.

In all his games, cars and guns and land, he expected Carol to take an
interest. But he did not give her the facts which might have created
interest. He talked only of the obvious and tedious aspects; never of
his aspirations in finance, nor of the mechanical principles of motors.

This month of romance she was eager to understand his hobbies. She
shivered in the garage while he spent half an hour in deciding whether
to put alcohol or patent non-freezing liquid into the radiator, or to
drain out the water entirely. "Or no, then I wouldn't want to take
her out if it turned warm--still, of course, I could fill the
radiator again--wouldn't take so awful long--just take a few pails
of water--still, if it turned cold on me again before I drained
it----Course there's some people that put in kerosene, but they say it
rots the hose-connections and----Where did I put that lug-wrench?"

It was at this point that she gave up being a motorist and retired to
the house.

In their new intimacy he was more communicative about his practise;
he informed her, with the invariable warning not to tell, that Mrs.
Sunderquist had another baby coming, that the "hired girl at Howland's
was in trouble." But when she asked technical questions he did not know
how to answer; when she inquired, "Exactly what is the method of taking
out the tonsils?" he yawned, "Tonsilectomy? Why you just--