He drew up on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie.  He glanced across the reeds reflected on the water, the quiver of wavelets like crumpled tinfoil, the distant shores patched with dark woods, silvery oats and deep yellow wheat.  He patted her hand.  “Sis——­Carol, you’re a darling girl, but you’re difficult.  Know what I think?”

“Yes.”

“Humph.  Maybe you do, but——­My humble (not too humble!) opinion is that you like to be different.  You like to think you’re peculiar.  Why, if you knew how many tens of thousands of women, especially in New York, say just what you do, you’d lose all the fun of thinking you’re a lone genius and you’d be on the band-wagon whooping it up for Gopher Prairie and a good decent family life.  There’s always about a million young women just out of college who want to teach their grandmothers how to suck eggs.”

“How proud you are of that homely rustic metaphor!  You use it at ‘banquets’ and directors’ meetings, and boast of your climb from a humble homestead.”

“Huh!  You may have my number.  I’m not telling.  But look here:  You’re so prejudiced against Gopher Prairie that you overshoot the mark; you antagonize those who might be inclined to agree with you in some particulars but——­Great guns, the town can’t be all wrong!”

“No, it isn’t.  But it could be.  Let me tell you a fable.  Imagine a cavewoman complaining to her mate.  She doesn’t like one single thing; she hates the damp cave, the rats running over her bare legs, the stiff skin garments, the eating of half-raw meat, her husband’s bushy face, the constant battles, and the worship of the spirits who will hoodoo her unless she gives the priests her best claw necklace.  Her man protests, ‘But it can’t all be wrong!’ and he thinks he has reduced her to absurdity.  Now you assume that a world which produces a Percy Bresnahan and a Velvet Motor Company must be civilized.  It is?  Aren’t we only about half-way along in barbarism?  I suggest Mrs. Bogart as a test.  And we’ll continue in barbarism just as long as people as nearly intelligent as you continue to defend things as they are because they are.”

“You’re a fair spieler, child.  But, by golly, I’d like to see you try to design a new manifold, or run a factory and keep a lot of your fellow reds from Czech-slovenski-magyar-godknowswheria on the job!  You’d drop your theories so darn quick!  I’m not any defender of things as they are.  Sure.  They’re rotten.  Only I’m sensible.”

He preached his gospel:  love of outdoors, Playing the Game, loyalty to friends.  She had the neophyte’s shock of discovery that, outside of tracts, conservatives do not tremble and find no answer when an iconoclast turns on them, but retort with agility and confusing statistics.