y by day.

With nine-tenths of her emotion concentrated upon Hugh, she did not
criticize shops, streets, acquaintances . . . this year or two. She
hurried to Uncle Whittier's store for a package of corn-flakes, she
abstractedly listened to Uncle Whittier's denunciation of Martin
Mahoney for asserting that the wind last Tuesday had been south and not
southwest, she came back along streets that held no surprises nor the
startling faces of strangers. Thinking of Hugh's teething all the way,
she did not reflect that this store, these drab blocks, made up all her
background. She did her work, and she triumphed over winning from the
Clarks at five hundred.

The most considerable event of the two years after the birth of Hugh
occurred when Vida Sherwin resigned from the high school and was
married. Carol was her attendant, and as the wedding was at the
Episcopal Church, all the women wore new kid slippers and long white kid
gloves, and looked refined.

For years Carol had been little sister to Vida, and had never in the
least known to what degree Vida loved her and hated her and in curious
strained ways was bound to her.

CHAPTER XXI

I

GRAY steel that seems unmoving because it spins so fast in the balanced
fly-wheel, gray snow in an avenue of elms, gray dawn with the sun behind
it--this was the gray of Vida Sherwin's life at thirty-six.

She was small and active and sallow; her yellow hair was faded, and
looked dry; her blue silk blouses and modest lace collars and high black
shoes and sailor hats were as literal and uncharming as a schoolroom
desk; but her eyes determined her appearance, revealed her as a
personage and a force, indicated her faith in the goodness and purpose
of everything. They were blue, and they were never still; they expressed
amusement, pity, enthusiasm. If she had been seen in sleep, with the
wrinkles beside her eyes stilled and the creased lids hiding the radiant
irises, she would have lost her potency.

She was born in a hill-smothered Wisconsin village where her father
was a prosy minister; she labored through a sanctimonious college; she
taught for two years in an iron-range town of blurry-faced Tatars and
Montenegrins, and wastes of ore, and when she came to Gopher Prairie,
its trees and the shining spaciousness of the wheat prairie made her
certain that she was in paradise.

She admitted to her fellow-teachers that the schoolbuilding was
slightly damp, but she insisted that the ro