ve to stand my temper
at meals. Do----" Mrs. Westlake looked at her sharply. "Why, don't you
do the same thing?"

"I've been thinking about it." Carol laughed in an embarrassed way.
"Then you wouldn't regard me as a complete hussy if I wanted to be by
myself now and then?"

"Why, child, every woman ought to get off by herself and turn over her
thoughts--about children, and God, and how bad her complexion is, and
the way men don't really understand her, and how much work she finds to
do in the house, and how much patience it takes to endure some things in
a man's love."

"Yes!" Carol said it in a gasp, her hands twisted together. She wanted
to confess not only her hatred for the Aunt Bessies but her covert
irritation toward those she best loved: her alienation from Kennicott,
her disappointment in Guy Pollock, her uneasiness in the presence of
Vida. She had enough self-control to confine herself to, "Yes. Men! The
dear blundering souls, we do have to get off and laugh at them."

"Of course we do. Not that you have to laugh at Dr. Kennicott so much,
but MY man, heavens, now there's a rare old bird! Reading story-books
when he ought to be tending to business! 'Marcus Westlake,' I say to
him, 'you're a romantic old fool.' And does he get angry? He does not!
He chuckles and says, 'Yes, my beloved, folks do say that married
people grow to resemble each other!' Drat him!" Mrs. Westlake laughed
comfortably.

After such a disclosure what could Carol do but return the courtesy by
remarking that as for Kennicott, he wasn't romantic enough--the darling.
Before she left she had babbled to Mrs. Westlake her dislike for Aunt
Bessie, the fact that Kennicott's income was now more than five thousand
a year, her view of the reason why Vida had married Raymie (which
included some thoroughly insincere praise of Raymie's "kind heart"), her
opinion of the library-board, just what Kennicott had said about Mrs.
Carthal's diabetes, and what Kennicott thought of the several surgeons
in the Cities.

She went home soothed by confession, inspirited by finding a new friend.

IV

The tragicomedy of the "domestic situation."

Oscarina went back home to help on the farm, and Carol had a succession
of maids, with gaps between. The lack of servants was becoming one
of the most cramping problems of the prairie town. Increasingly the
farmers' daughters rebelled against village dullness, and against the
unchanged attitude of the Juanitas towa