Kennicott looked at him heavily, and grunted, “I don’t know a thing about it. . . .  Coming, Carrie?”

“I am not!  The match was to be here, and it will be here!  You can tell Harry Haydock that he’s beastly rude!” She rallied the five who had been left out, who would always be left out.  “Come on!  We’ll toss to see which four of us play the Only and Original First Annual Tennis Tournament of Forest Hills, Del Monte, and Gopher Prairie!”

“Don’t know as I blame you,” said Kennicott.  “Well have supper at home then?” He drove off.

She hated him for his composure.  He had ruined her defiance.  She felt much less like Susan B. Anthony as she turned to her huddled followers.

Mrs. Dillon and Willis Woodford lost the toss.  The others played out the game, slowly, painfully, stumbling on the rough earth, muffing the easiest shots, watched only by the small boy and his sniveling sister.  Beyond the court stretched the eternal stubble-fields.  The four marionettes, awkwardly going through exercises, insignificant in the hot sweep of contemptuous land, were not heroic; their voices did not ring out in the score, but sounded apologetic; and when the game was over they glanced about as though they were waiting to be laughed at.

They walked home.  Carol took Erik’s arm.  Through her thin linen sleeve she could feel the crumply warmth of his familiar brown jersey coat.  She observed that there were purple and red gold threads interwoven with the brown.  She remembered the first time she had seen it.

Their talk was nothing but improvisations on the theme:  “I never did like this Haydock.  He just considers his own convenience.”  Ahead of them, the Dillons and Woodfords spoke of the weather and B. J. Gougerling’s new bungalow.  No one referred to their tennis tournament.  At her gate Carol shook hands firmly with Erik and smiled at him.

Next morning, Sunday morning, when Carol was on the porch, the Haydocks drove up.

“We didn’t mean to be rude to you, dearie!” implored Juanita.  “I wouldn’t have you think that for anything.  We planned that Will and you should come down and have supper at our cottage.”

“No.  I’m sure you didn’t mean to be.”  Carol was super-neighborly.  “But I do think you ought to apologize to poor Erik Valborg.  He was terribly hurt.”

“Oh.  Valborg.  I don’t care so much what he thinks,” objected Harry.  “He’s nothing but a conceited buttinsky.  Juanita and I kind of figured he was trying to run this tennis thing too darn much anyway.”

“But you asked him to make arrangements.”

“I know, but I don’t like him.  Good Lord, you couldn’t hurt his feelings!  He dresses up like a chorus man—­and, by golly, he looks like one!—­but he’s nothing but a Swede farm boy, and these foreigners, they all got hides like a covey of rhinoceroses .”

“But he is hurt!”

“Well——­I don’t suppose I ought to have gone off half-cocked, and not jollied him along.  I’ll give him a cigar.  He’ll——­”