Main Street - Sinclair Lewis (little red riding hood ebook .txt) 📗

told D. H. to make it polished granite. You make me tired!”

“Leave us go! Come on, Carrie, leave us go!” from Kennicott.

Raymie waylaid them in the hall and secretly informed Carol that she musn’t mind the traveling salesman’s coarseness⁠—he belonged to the hwa pollwa.

Kennicott chuckled, “Well, child, how about it? Do you prefer an artistic guy like Raymie to stupid boobs like Sam Clark and me?”

“My dear! Let’s go home, and play pinochle, and laugh, and be foolish, and slip up to bed, and sleep without dreaming. It’s beautiful to be just a solid citizeness!”

III

From the Gopher Prairie Weekly Dauntless:

One of the most charming affairs of the season was held Tuesday evening at the handsome new residence of Sam and Mrs. Clark when many of our most prominent citizens gathered to greet the lovely new bride of our popular local physician, Dr. Will Kennicott. All present spoke of the many charms of the bride, formerly Miss Carol Milford of St. Paul. Games and stunts were the order of the day, with merry talk and conversation. At a late hour dainty refreshments were served, and the party broke up with many expressions of pleasure at the pleasant affair. Among those present were Mesdames Kennicott, Elder⁠—

Dr. Will Kennicott, for the past several years one of our most popular and skilful physicians and surgeons, gave the town a delightful surprise when he returned from an extended honeymoon tour in Colorado this week with his charming bride, née Miss Carol Milford of St. Paul, whose family are socially prominent in Minneapolis and Mankato. Mrs. Kennicott is a lady of manifold charms, not only of striking charm of appearance but is also a distinguished graduate of a school in the East and has for the past year been prominently connected in an important position of responsibility with the St. Paul Public Library, in which city Dr. “Will” had the good fortune to meet her. The city of Gopher Prairie welcomes her to our midst and prophesies for her many happy years in the energetic city of the twin lakes and the future. The Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott will reside for the present at the Doctor’s home on Poplar Street which his charming mother has been keeping for him who has now returned to her own home at Lac-qui-Meurt leaving a host of friends who regret her absence and hope to see her soon with us again.

IV

She knew that if she was ever to effect any of the “reforms” which she had pictured, she must have a starting-place. What confused her during the three or four months after her marriage was not lack of perception that she must be definite, but sheer careless happiness of her first home.

In the pride of being a housewife she loved every detail⁠—the brocade armchair with the weak back, even the brass water-cock on the hot-water reservoir, when she had become familiar with it by trying to scour it to brilliance.

She found a maid⁠—plump radiant Bea Sorenson from Scandia Crossing. Bea was droll in her attempt to be at once a respectful servant and a bosom friend. They laughed together over the fact that the stove did not draw, over the slipperiness of fish in the pan.

Like a child playing Grandma in a trailing skirt, Carol paraded uptown for her marketing, crying greetings to housewives along the way. Everybody bowed to her, strangers and all, and made her feel that they wanted her, that she belonged here. In city shops she was merely A Customer⁠—a hat, a voice to bore a harassed clerk. Here she was Mrs. Doc Kennicott, and her preferences in grapefruit and manners were known and remembered and worth discussing⁠ ⁠… even if they weren’t worth fulfilling.

Shopping was a delight of brisk conferences. The very merchants whose droning she found the dullest at the two or three parties which were given to welcome her were the pleasantest confidants of all when they had something to talk about⁠—lemons or cotton voile or floor-oil. With that skipjack Dave Dyer, the druggist, she conducted a long mock-quarrel. She pretended that he cheated her in the price of magazines and candy; he pretended she was a detective from the Twin Cities. He hid behind the prescription-counter, and when she stamped her foot he came out wailing, “Honest, I haven’t done nothing crooked today⁠—not yet.”

She never recalled her first impression of Main Street; never had precisely the same despair at its ugliness. By the end of two shopping-tours everything had changed proportions. As she never entered it, the Minniemashie House ceased to exist for her. Clark’s Hardware Store, Dyer’s Drug Store, the groceries of Ole Jenson and Frederick Ludelmeyer and Howland & Gould, the meat markets, the notions shop⁠—they expanded, and hid all other structures. When she entered Mr. Ludelmeyer’s store and he wheezed, “Goot mornin’, Mrs. Kennicott. Vell, dis iss a fine day,” she did not notice the dustiness of the shelves nor the stupidity of the girl clerk; and she did not remember the mute colloquy with him on her first view of Main Street.

She could not find half the kinds of food she wanted, but that made shopping more of an adventure. When she did contrive to get sweetbreads at Dahl & Oleson’s Meat Market the triumph was so vast that she buzzed with excitement and admired the strong wise butcher, Mr. Dahl.

She appreciated the homely ease of village life. She liked the old men, farmers, G.A.R. veterans, who when they gossiped sometimes squatted on their heels on the sidewalk, like resting Indians, and reflectively spat over the curb.

She found beauty in the children.

She had suspected that her married friends exaggerated their passion for children. But in her work in the library, children had become individuals to her, citizens of the State with their own rights and their own senses of humor. In the library she had not had much time to give them, but now she knew the luxury of stopping, gravely asking Bessie Clark whether her doll had yet recovered from its rheumatism, and