a while. I dragged through days of bitter
homesickness. Nothing seemed real. No one seemed sincere. Life was a
stage. Everybody seemed to be acting a part and speaking their pieces
with guttural voices. Even my husband's voice sounded different--or
else I realized for the first time that Boston apes London English. Tom
had learned his mother tongue in Boston, and now suddenly he seemed like
a foreigner to me simply because he spoke like these other foreigners.
The sun went out of my heaven. I was dumb with loneliness and sick with
the fear of lost faith. Could it be that my husband was affecting these
English mannerisms? Certainly he seemed at home in England, while I
seemed to be adrift, alone in an arctic ocean.

I had no friend in England, and more and more my husband's special work
was engrossing him. When we were together I felt tongue-tied. He had
tried to be gentle with me; but I was strange in this world of his, and
lonely and sensitive. I had dreamed so much of this world, and now that
I was in it, it was false and petty. I longed for the United States,
for my Northwest, for my hills and wide, far plains. I wanted to meet
somebody from Madison who smiled like a friend.

One day Tom looked at me searchingly, and said I must be ill.

I confessed to a little homesickness. Tom became very attentive.
He took me sightseeing. We lunched at the quaint inn where Dickens
found his inspiration for "Pickwick Papers" and where the literary
lights of London foregathered and still foregather for luncheon. We sat
in one of the cozy little stalls--just Tom and I.

Suddenly it swept over me that life had gone all wrong. Here was a
dream come true, and no joy in my heart. Tom asked me for my thoughts.
I told him, quite frankly, I was thinking of home. I was thinking of
mother in her cotton house dress with her knitted shawl around her
shoulders, of father in his jeans and high boots tramping over the range
with the men; I saw the cow and the pigs and the chickens, the smelly
corral and the water hole, the twins trying to rub each other's face in
the mud. And I was thinking--Tom would n't fit into my world, and I
could not belong to his. That was the second time I heard Tom swear.
He wanted to know what kind of a snob I thought he was. He'd be as much
at home with dad on the ranch as he was in London. "The fault is with
you," he said. "You 're not adaptable, and you don't try to be."

Tom did n't unde