Calibree handed her over to his wife, a thick woman who called her “dearie,” and asked if she was hot and, visibly searching for conversation, produced, “Let’s see, you and the doctor have a Little One, haven’t you?” At dinner Mrs. Calibree served the corned beef and cabbage and looked steamy, looked like the steamy leaves of cabbage.  The men were oblivious of their wives as they gave the social passwords of Main Street, the orthodox opinions on weather, crops, and motor cars, then flung away restraint and gyrated in the debauch of shop-talk.  Stroking his chin, drawling in the ecstasy of being erudite, Kennicott inquired, “Say, doctor, what success have you had with thyroid for treatment of pains in the legs before child-birth?”

Carol did not resent their assumption that she was too ignorant to be admitted to masculine mysteries.  She was used to it.  But the cabbage and Mrs. Calibree’s monotonous “I don’t know what we’re coming to with all this difficulty getting hired girls” were gumming her eyes with drowsiness.  She sought to clear them by appealing to Calibree, in a manner of exaggerated liveliness, “Doctor, have the medical societies in Minnesota ever advocated legislation for help to nursing mothers?”

Calibree slowly revolved toward her.  “Uh—­I’ve never—­uh—­never looked into it.  I don’t believe much in getting mixed up in politics.”  He turned squarely from her and, peering earnestly at Kennicott, resumed, “Doctor, what’s been your experience with unilateral pyelonephritis?  Buckburn of Baltimore advocates decapsulation and nephrotomy, but seems to me——­”

Not till after two did they rise.  In the lee of the stonily mature trio Carol proceeded to the street fair which added mundane gaiety to the annual rites of the United and Fraternal Order of Beavers.  Beavers, human Beavers, were everywhere:  thirty-second degree Beavers in gray sack suits and decent derbies, more flippant Beavers in crash summer coats and straw hats, rustic Beavers in shirt sleeves and frayed suspenders; but whatever his caste-symbols, every Beaver was distinguished by an enormous shrimp-colored ribbon lettered in silver, “Sir Knight and Brother, U. F. O. B., Annual State Convention.”  On the motherly shirtwaist of each of their wives was a badge “Sir Knight’s Lady.”  The Duluth delegation had brought their famous Beaver amateur band, in Zouave costumes of green velvet jacket, blue trousers, and scarlet fez.  The strange thing was that beneath their scarlet pride the Zouaves’ faces remained those of American business-men, pink, smooth, eye-glassed; and as they stood playing in a circle, at the corner of Main Street and Second, as they tootled on fifes or with swelling cheeks blew into cornets, their eyes remained as owlish as though they were sitting at desks under the sign “This Is My Busy Day.”

Carol had supposed that the Beavers were average citizens organized for the purposes of getting cheap life-insurance and playing poker at the lodge-rooms every second Wednesday, but she saw a large poster which proclaimed: