Resentfully, “I am!”

Carol concentrated on her.  “My dear, you sound so!  I know how it is.  I used to be tired when I was on the job—­I was a librarian.  What was your college?  I was Blodgett.”

More interestedly, “I went to the U.”  Fern meant the University of Minnesota.

“You must have had a splendid time.  Blodgett was a bit dull.”

“Where were you a librarian?” challengingly.

“St. Paul—­the main library.”

“Honest?  Oh dear, I wish I was back in the Cities!  This is my first year of teaching, and I’m scared stiff.  I did have the best time in college:  dramatics and basket-ball and fussing and dancing—­I’m simply crazy about dancing.  And here, except when I have the kids in gymnasium class, or when I’m chaperoning the basket-ball team on a trip out-of-town, I won’t dare to move above a whisper.  I guess they don’t care much if you put any pep into teaching or not, as long as you look like a Good Influence out of school-hours—­and that means never doing anything you want to.  This normal course is bad enough, but the regular school will be fierce!  If it wasn’t too late to get a job in the Cities, I swear I’d resign here.  I bet I won’t dare to go to a single dance all winter.  If I cut loose and danced the way I like to, they’d think I was a perfect hellion—­poor harmless me!  Oh, I oughtn’t to be talking like this.  Fern, you never could be cagey!”

“Don’t be frightened, my dear! . . .  Doesn’t that sound atrociously old and kind!  I’m talking to you the way Mrs. Westlake talks to me!  That’s having a husband and a kitchen range, I suppose.  But I feel young, and I want to dance like a—­like a hellion?—­too.  So I sympathize.”

Fern made a sound of gratitude.  Carol inquired, “What experience did you have with college dramatics?  I tried to start a kind of Little Theater here.  It was dreadful.  I must tell you about it——­”

Two hours later, when Kennicott came over to greet Fern and to yawn, “Look here, Carrie, don’t you suppose you better be thinking about turning in?  I’ve got a hard day tomorrow,” the two were talking so intimately that they constantly interrupted each other.

As she went respectably home, convoyed by a husband, and decorously holding up her skirts, Carol rejoiced, “Everything has changed!  I have two friends, Fern and——­But who’s the other?  That’s queer; I thought there was——­Oh, how absurd!”

V

She often passed Erik Valborg on the street; the brown jersey coat became unremarkable.  When she was driving with Kennicott, in early evening, she saw him on the lake shore, reading a thin book which might easily have been poetry.  She noted that he was the only person in the motorized town who still took long walks.