wy
block.

They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang phrases and flares
of poetry; their silences were contentment, or shaky crises when his arm
took her shoulder. All the beauty of youth, first discovered when it
is passing--and all the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried man
encountering a pretty girl at the time when she is slightly weary of her
employment and sees no glory ahead nor any man she is glad to serve.

They liked each other honestly--they were both honest. She was
disappointed by his devotion to making money, but she was sure that
he did not lie to patients, and that he did keep up with the medical
magazines. What aroused her to something more than liking was his
boyishness when they went tramping.

They walked from St. Paul down the river to Mendota, Kennicott more
elastic-seeming in a cap and a soft crepe shirt, Carol youthful in a
tam-o'-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge suit with an absurdly and
agreeably broad turn-down linen collar, and frivolous ankles above
athletic shoes. The High Bridge crosses the Mississippi, mounting from
low banks to a palisade of cliffs. Far down beneath it on the St. Paul
side, upon mud flats, is a wild settlement of chicken-infested gardens
and shanties patched together from discarded sign-boards, sheets of
corrugated iron, and planks fished out of the river. Carol leaned
over the rail of the bridge to look down at this Yang-tse village;
in delicious imaginary fear she shrieked that she was dizzy with the
height; and it was an extremely human satisfaction to have a strong male
snatch her back to safety, instead of having a logical woman teacher or
librarian sniff, "Well, if you're scared, why don't you get away from
the rail, then?"

From the cliffs across the river Carol and Kennicott looked back at St.
Paul on its hills; an imperial sweep from the dome of the cathedral to
the dome of the state capitol.

The river road led past rocky field slopes, deep glens, woods flamboyant
now with September, to Mendota, white walls and a spire among trees
beneath a hill, old-world in its placid ease. And for this fresh land,
the place is ancient. Here is the bold stone house which General Sibley,
the king of fur-traders, built in 1835, with plaster of river mud, and
ropes of twisted grass for laths. It has an air of centuries. In its
solid rooms Carol and Kennicott found prints from other days which the
house had seen--tail-coats of robin's-egg blue, clumsy