now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and
beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off."

Babbitt's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, came
down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dusty
general-store. He was proud of being a freeborn independent American of
the good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly,
and disagreeable. His favorite remark was "How much did you pay for
that?" He regarded Verona's books, Babbitt's silver pencil, and flowers
on the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would have
quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbitt
teased and poked fingers at and addressed:

"I think this baby's a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby's a bum,
he's a bum, yes, sir, he's a bum, that's what he is, he's a bum, this
baby's a bum, he's nothing but an old bum, that's what he is--a bum!"

All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries into
epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka, aged eleven, was
demanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, "like
all the girls."

Babbitt raged, "I'm sick of it! Having to carry three generations. Whole
damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of mother's income, listen to Henry
T., listen to Myra's worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an old
grouch for trying to help the children. All of 'em depending on me and
picking on me and not a damn one of 'em grateful! No relief, and no
credit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for--good Lord, how
long?"

He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by their
consternation that he, the rock, should give way.

He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and
petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl "Oh, let me alone!" without
reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide
along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red.
The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ripple on
the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading
light blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad. With no
Vergil Gunches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism, he
beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly
mechanical. Mechanical business--a brisk selling of badly built houses.
Mechanical religion--a dry, hard church, shut