Gopher Prairie, in June, her second baby was
stirring within her.

CHAPTER XXXIX

SHE wondered all the way home what her sensations would be. She wondered
about it so much that she had every sensation she had imagined. She was
excited by each familiar porch, each hearty "Well, well!" and flattered
to be, for a day, the most important news of the community. She bustled
about, making calls. Juanita Haydock bubbled over their Washington
encounter, and took Carol to her social bosom. This ancient opponent
seemed likely to be her most intimate friend, for Vida Sherwin, though
she was cordial, stood back and watched for imported heresies.

In the evening Carol went to the mill. The mystical Om-Om-Om of the
dynamos in the electric-light plant behind the mill was louder in the
darkness. Outside sat the night watchman, Champ Perry. He held up his
stringy hands and squeaked, "We've all missed you terrible."

Who in Washington would miss her?

Who in Washington could be depended upon like Guy Pollock? When she saw
him on the street, smiling as always, he seemed an eternal thing, a part
of her own self.

After a week she decided that she was neither glad nor sorry to be back.
She entered each day with the matter-of-fact attitude with which she
had gone to her office in Washington. It was her task; there would be
mechanical details and meaningless talk; what of it?

The only problem which she had approached with emotion proved
insignificant. She had, on the train, worked herself up to such devotion
that she was willing to give up her own room, to try to share all of her
life with Kennicott.

He mumbled, ten minutes after she had entered the house, "Say, I've kept
your room for you like it was. I've kind of come round to your way of
thinking. Don't see why folks need to get on each other's nerves just
because they're friendly. Darned if I haven't got so I like a little
privacy and mulling things over by myself."

II

She had left a city which sat up nights to talk of universal transition;
of European revolution, guild socialism, free verse. She had fancied
that all the world was changing.

She found that it was not.

In Gopher Prairie the only ardent new topics were prohibition, the place
in Minneapolis where you could get whisky at thirteen dollars a quart,
recipes for home-made beer, the "high cost of living," the presidential
election, Clark's new car, and not very novel foibles of Cy Bogart.
Their problems