ool like the plumage of ducklings,
moccasins, red flannel wristlets for the blazing chapped wrists
of boys--these protections against winter were busily dug out of
moth-ball-sprinkled drawers and tar-bags in closets, and all over town
small boys were squealing, "Oh, there's my mittens!" or "Look at my
shoe-packs!" There is so sharp a division between the panting summer and
the stinging winter of the Northern plains that they rediscovered with
surprise and a feeling of heroism this armor of an Artic explorer.

Winter garments surpassed even personal gossip as the topic at parties.
It was good form to ask, "Put on your heavies yet?" There were as many
distinctions in wraps as in motor cars. The lesser sort appeared in
yellow and black dogskin coats, but Kennicott was lordly in a long
raccoon ulster and a new seal cap. When the snow was too deep for his
motor he went off on country calls in a shiny, floral, steel-tipped
cutter, only his ruddy nose and his cigar emerging from the fur.

Carol herself stirred Main Street by a loose coat of nutria. Her
finger-tips loved the silken fur.

Her liveliest activity now was organizing outdoor sports in the
motor-paralyzed town.

The automobile and bridge-whist had not only made more evident the
social divisions in Gopher Prairie but they had also enfeebled the
love of activity. It was so rich-looking to sit and drive--and so easy.
Skiing and sliding were "stupid" and "old-fashioned." In fact, the
village longed for the elegance of city recreations almost as much as
the cities longed for village sports; and Gopher Prairie took as
much pride in neglecting coasting as St. Paul--or New York--in going
coasting. Carol did inspire a successful skating-party in mid-November.
Plover Lake glistened in clear sweeps of gray-green ice, ringing to the
skates. On shore the ice-tipped reeds clattered in the wind, and oak
twigs with stubborn last leaves hung against a milky sky. Harry Haydock
did figure-eights, and Carol was certain that she had found the perfect
life. But when snow had ended the skating and she tried to get up a
moonlight sliding party, the matrons hesitated to stir away from their
radiators and their daily bridge-whist imitations of the city. She had
to nag them. They scooted down a long hill on a bob-sled, they upset
and got snow down their necks they shrieked that they would do it again
immediately--and they did not do it again at all.

She badgered another group into going