d boots--yes, and
they'd come tell me I was hired on a salary now, and couldn't fix my
fees! That'd be fine for you, wouldn't it!"

"But why shouldn't they?"

"Why? That bunch of----Telling ME----Oh, for heaven's sake, let's quit
arguing. All this discussing may be all right at a party but----Let's
forget it while we're hunting."

"I know. The Wonderlust--probably it's a worse affliction than the
Wanderlust. I just wonder----"

She told herself that she had everything in the world. And after each
self-rebuke she stumbled again on "I just wonder----"

They ate their sandwiches by a prairie slew: long grass reaching up out
of clear water, mossy bogs, red-winged black-birds, the scum a splash of
gold-green. Kennicott smoked a pipe while she leaned back in the buggy
and let her tired spirit be absorbed in the Nirvana of the incomparable
sky.

They lurched to the highroad and awoke from their sun-soaked drowse at
the sound of the clopping hoofs. They paused to look for partridges in a
rim of woods, little woods, very clean and shiny and gay, silver birches
and poplars with immaculate green trunks, encircling a lake of sandy
bottom, a splashing seclusion demure in the welter of hot prairie.

Kennicott brought down a fat red squirrel and at dusk he had a dramatic
shot at a flight of ducks whirling down from the upper air, skimming the
lake, instantly vanishing.

They drove home under the sunset. Mounds of straw, and wheat-stacks like
bee-hives, stood out in startling rose and gold, and the green-tufted
stubble glistened. As the vast girdle of crimson darkened, the fulfilled
land became autumnal in deep reds and browns. The black road before
the buggy turned to a faint lavender, then was blotted to uncertain
grayness. Cattle came in a long line up to the barred gates of the
farmyards, and over the resting land was a dark glow.

Carol had found the dignity and greatness which had failed her in Main
Street.

II

Till they had a maid they took noon dinner and six o'clock supper at
Mrs. Gurrey's boarding-house.

Mrs. Elisha Gurrey, relict of Deacon Gurrey the dealer in hay and grain,
was a pointed-nosed, simpering woman with iron-gray hair drawn so tight
that it resembled a soiled handkerchief covering her head. But she was
unexpectedly cheerful, and her dining-room, with its thin tablecloth on
a long pine table, had the decency of clean bareness.

In the line of unsmiling, methodically chewing guests, like h