t get this straight. Some one said to me the other
day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors
hate each other, because of the money----"

"Who said that?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I'll bet a hat it was your Vida Sherwin. She's a brainy woman, but
she'd be a damn sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didn't let
so much of her brains ooze out that way."

"Will! O Will! That's horrible! Aside from the vulgarity----Some ways,
Vida is my best friend. Even if she HAD said it. Which, as a matter of
fact, she didn't." He reared up his thick shoulders, in absurd pink and
green flannelette pajamas. He sat straight, and irritatingly snapped his
fingers, and growled:

"Well, if she didn't say it, let's forget her. Doesn't make any
difference who said it, anyway. The point is that you believe it. God!
To think you don't understand me any better than that! Money!"

("This is the first real quarrel we've ever had," she was agonizing.)

He thrust out his long arm and snatched his wrinkly vest from a chair.
He took out a cigar, a match. He tossed the vest on the floor. He
lighted the cigar and puffed savagely. He broke up the match and snapped
the fragments at the foot-board.

She suddenly saw the foot-board of the bed as the foot-stone of the
grave of love.

The room was drab-colored and ill-ventilated--Kennicott did not "believe
in opening the windows so darn wide that you heat all outdoors." The
stale air seemed never to change. In the light from the hall they were
two lumps of bedclothes with shoulders and tousled heads attached.

She begged, "I didn't mean to wake you up, dear. And please don't smoke.
You've been smoking so much. Please go back to sleep. I'm sorry."

"Being sorry 's all right, but I'm going to tell you one or two things.
This falling for anybody's say-so about medical jealousy and competition
is simply part and parcel of your usual willingness to think the worst
you possibly can of us poor dubs in Gopher Prairie. Trouble with women
like you is, you always want to ARGUE. Can't take things the way they
are. Got to argue. Well, I'm not going to argue about this in any way,
shape, manner, or form. Trouble with you is, you don't make any effort
to appreciate us. You're so damned superior, and think the city is such
a hell of a lot finer place, and you want us to do what YOU want, all
the time----"

"That's not true! It's I who make the effort. It's they--it's you--who
st