She brooded, not looking back.  She warned herself that she was probably exaggerating; that no young man could have all these exalted qualities.  Wasn’t he too obviously smart, too glossy-new?  Like a movie actor.  Probably he was a traveling salesman who sang tenor and fancied himself in imitations of Newport clothes and spoke of “the swellest business proposition that ever came down the pike.”  In a panic she peered at him.  No!  This was no hustling salesman, this boy with the curving Grecian lips and the serious eyes.

She rose after the service, carefully taking Kennicott’s arm and smiling at him in a mute assertion that she was devoted to him no matter what happened.  She followed the Mystery’s soft brown jersey shoulders out of the church.

Fatty Hicks, the shrill and puffy son of Nat, flapped his hand at the beautiful stranger and jeered, “How’s the kid?  All dolled up like a plush horse today, ain’t we!”

Carol was exceeding sick.  Her herald from the outside was Erik Valborg, “Elizabeth.”  Apprentice tailor!  Gasoline and hot goose!  Mending dirty jackets!  Respectfully holding a tape-measure about a paunch!

And yet, she insisted, this boy was also himself.

III

They had Sunday dinner with the Smails, in a dining-room which centered about a fruit and flower piece and a crayon-enlargement of Uncle Whittier.  Carol did not heed Aunt Bessie’s fussing in regard to Mrs. Robert B. Schminke’s bead necklace and Whittier’s error in putting on the striped pants, day like this.  She did not taste the shreds of roast pork.  She said vacuously: 

“Uh—­Will, I wonder if that young man in the white flannel trousers, at church this morning, was this Valborg person that they’re all talking about?”

“Yump.  That’s him.  Wasn’t that the darndest get-up he had on!” Kennicott scratched at a white smear on his hard gray sleeve.

“It wasn’t so bad.  I wonder where he comes from?  He seems to have lived in cities a good deal.  Is he from the East?”

“The East?  Him?  Why, he comes from a farm right up north here, just this side of Jefferson.  I know his father slightly—­Adolph Valborg—­typical cranky old Swede farmer.”

“Oh, really?” blandly.

“Believe he has lived in Minneapolis for quite some time, though.  Learned his trade there.  And I will say he’s bright, some ways.  Reads a lot.  Pollock says he takes more books out of the library than anybody else in town.  Huh!  He’s kind of like you in that!”

The Smails and Kennicott laughed very much at this sly jest.  Uncle Whittier seized the conversation.  “That fellow that’s working for Hicks?  Milksop, that’s what he is.  Makes me tired to see a young fellow that ought to be in the war, or anyway out in the fields earning his living honest, like I done when I was young, doing a woman’s work and then come out and dress up like a show-actor!  Why, when I was his age——­”