She could not find half the kinds of food she wanted, but that made shopping more of an adventure.  When she did contrive to get sweetbreads at Dahl & Oleson’s Meat Market the triumph was so vast that she buzzed with excitement and admired the strong wise butcher, Mr. Dahl.

She appreciated the homely ease of village life.  She liked the old men, farmers, G.A.R. veterans, who when they gossiped sometimes squatted on their heels on the sidewalk, like resting Indians, and reflectively spat over the curb.

She found beauty in the children.

She had suspected that her married friends exaggerated their passion for children.  But in her work in the library, children had become individuals to her, citizens of the State with their own rights and their own senses of humor.  In the library she had not had much time to give them, but now she knew the luxury of stopping, gravely asking Bessie Clark whether her doll had yet recovered from its rheumatism, and agreeing with Oscar Martinsen that it would be Good Fun to go trapping “mushrats.”

She touched the thought, “It would be sweet to have a baby of my own.  I do want one.  Tiny——­No!  Not yet!  There’s so much to do.  And I’m still tired from the job.  It’s in my bones.”

She rested at home.  She listened to the village noises common to all the world, jungle or prairie; sounds simple and charged with magic—­dogs barking, chickens making a gurgling sound of content, children at play, a man beating a rug, wind in the cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling, a footstep on the walk, jaunty voices of Bea and a grocer’s boy in the kitchen, a clinking anvil, a piano—­not too near.

Twice a week, at least, she drove into the country with Kennicott, to hunt ducks in lakes enameled with sunset, or to call on patients who looked up to her as the squire’s lady and thanked her for toys and magazines.  Evenings she went with her husband to the motion pictures and was boisterously greeted by every other couple; or, till it became too cold, they sat on the porch, bawling to passers-by in motors, or to neighbors who were raking the leaves.  The dust became golden in the low sun; the street was filled with the fragrance of burning leaves.

V

But she hazily wanted some one to whom she could say what she thought.

On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing and wished that the telephone would ring, Bea announced Miss Vida Sherwin.

Despite Vida Sherwin’s lively blue eyes, if you had looked at her in detail you would have found her face slightly lined, and not so much sallow as with the bloom rubbed off; you would have found her chest flat, and her fingers rough from needle and chalk and penholder; her blouses and plain cloth skirts undistinguished; and her hat worn too far back, betraying a dry forehead.  But you never did look at Vida Sherwin in detail.  You couldn’t.  Her electric activity veiled her.  She was as energetic as a chipmunk.  Her fingers fluttered; her sympathy came out in spurts; she sat on the edge of a chair in eagerness to be near her auditor, to send her enthusiasms and optimism across.