IV

Carol attended the only professional play which came to Gopher Prairie that spring.  It was a “tent show, presenting snappy new dramas under canvas.”  The hard-working actors doubled in brass, and took tickets; and between acts sang about the moon in June, and sold Dr. Wintergreen’s Surefire Tonic for Ills of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and Bowels.  They presented “Sunbonnet Nell:  A Dramatic Comedy of the Ozarks,” with J. Witherbee Boothby wringing the soul by his resonant “Yuh ain’t done right by mah little gal, Mr. City Man, but yer a-goin’ to find that back in these-yere hills there’s honest folks and good shots!”

The audience, on planks beneath the patched tent, admired Mr. Boothby’s beard and long rifle; stamped their feet in the dust at the spectacle of his heroism; shouted when the comedian aped the City Lady’s use of a lorgnon by looking through a doughnut stuck on a fork; wept visibly over Mr. Boothby’s Little Gal Nell, who was also Mr. Boothby’s legal wife Pearl, and when the curtain went down, listened respectfully to Mr. Boothby’s lecture on Dr. Wintergreen’s Tonic as a cure for tape-worms, which he illustrated by horrible pallid objects curled in bottles of yellowing alcohol.

Carol shook her head.  “Juanita is right.  I’m a fool.  Holiness of the drama!  Bernard Shaw!  The only trouble with ‘The Girl from Kankakee’ is that it’s too subtle for Gopher Prairie!”

She sought faith in spacious banal phrases, taken from books:  “the instinctive nobility of simple souls,” “need only the opportunity, to appreciate fine things,” and “sturdy exponents of democracy.”  But these optimisms did not sound so loud as the laughter of the audience at the funny-man’s line, “Yes, by heckelum, I’m a smart fella.”  She wanted to give up the play, the dramatic association, the town.  As she came out of the tent and walked with Kennicott down the dusty spring street, she peered at this straggling wooden village and felt that she could not possibly stay here through all of tomorrow.

It was Miles Bjornstam who gave her strength—­he and the fact that every seat for “The Girl from Kankakee” had been sold.

Bjornstam was “keeping company” with Bea.  Every night he was sitting on the back steps.  Once when Carol appeared he grumbled, “Hope you’re going to give this burg one good show.  If you don’t, reckon nobody ever will.”

V

It was the great night; it was the night of the play.  The two dressing-rooms were swirling with actors, panting, twitchy pale.  Del Snafflin the barber, who was as much a professional as Ella, having once gone on in a mob scene at a stock-company performance in Minneapolis, was making them up, and showing his scorn for amateurs with, “Stand still!  For the love o’ Mike, how do you expect me to get your eyelids dark if you keep a-wigglin’?” The actors were beseeching, “Hey, Del, put some red in my nostrils—­you put some in Rita’s—­gee, you didn’t hardly do anything to my face.”