If Carol was writing a letter to a classmate, or planning the week’s menus, she could be certain that Aunt Bessie would pop in and titter, “Now don’t let me disturb you, I just wanted to see where you were, don’t stop, I’m not going to stay only a second.  I just wondered if you could possibly have thought that I didn’t eat the onions this noon because I didn’t think they were properly cooked, but that wasn’t the reason at all, it wasn’t because I didn’t think they were well cooked, I’m sure that everything in your house is always very dainty and nice, though I do think that Oscarina is careless about some things, she doesn’t appreciate the big wages you pay her, and she is so cranky, all these Swedes are so cranky, I don’t really see why you have a Swede, but——­But that wasn’t it, I didn’t eat them not because I didn’t think they weren’t cooked proper, it was just—­I find that onions don’t agree with me, it’s very strange, ever since I had an attack of biliousness one time, I have found that onions, either fried onions or raw ones, and Whittier does love raw onions with vinegar and sugar on them——­”

It was pure affection.

Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love.

She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails’ presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement.  They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race.

With a loose-lipped, superior, village smile Uncle Whittier hinted, “What’s this I hear about your thinking Gopher Prairie ought to be all tore down and rebuilt, Carrie?  I don’t know where folks get these new-fangled ideas.  Lots of farmers in Dakota getting ’em these days.  About co-operation.  Think they can run stores better ’n storekeepers!  Huh!”

“Whit and I didn’t need no co-operation as long as we was farming!” triumphed Aunt Bessie.  “Carrie, tell your old auntie now:  don’t you ever go to church on Sunday?  You do go sometimes?  But you ought to go every Sunday!  When you’re as old as I am, you’ll learn that no matter how smart folks think they are, God knows a whole lot more than they do, and then you’ll realize and be glad to go and listen to your pastor!”

In the manner of one who has just beheld a two-headed calf they repeated that they had “never heard such funny ideas!” They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that