Carol crept back to her chair.  In the fervor of discussing the game they ignored her.  She was not used to being a wallflower.  She struggled to keep from oversensitiveness, from becoming unpopular by the sure method of believing that she was unpopular; but she hadn’t much reserve of patience, and at the end of the second game, when Ella Stowbody sniffily asked her, “Are you going to send to Minneapolis for your dress for the next soiree—­heard you were,” Carol said “Don’t know yet” with unnecessary sharpness.

She was relieved by the admiration with which the jeune fille Rita Simons looked at the steel buckles on her pumps; but she resented Mrs. Howland’s tart demand, “Don’t you find that new couch of yours is too broad to be practical?” She nodded, then shook her head, and touchily left Mrs. Howland to get out of it any meaning she desired.  Immediately she wanted to make peace.  She was close to simpering in the sweetness with which she addressed Mrs Howland:  “I think that is the prettiest display of beef-tea your husband has in his store.”

“Oh yes, Gopher Prairie isn’t so much behind the times,” gibed Mrs. Howland.  Some one giggled.

Their rebuffs made her haughty; her haughtiness irritated them to franker rebuffs; they were working up to a state of painfully righteous war when they were saved by the coming of food.

Though Juanita Haydock was highly advanced in the matters of finger-bowls, doilies, and bath-mats, her “refreshments” were typical of all the afternoon-coffees.  Juanita’s best friends, Mrs. Dyer and Mrs. Dashaway, passed large dinner plates, each with a spoon, a fork, and a coffee cup without saucer.  They apologized and discussed the afternoon’s game as they passed through the thicket of women’s feet.  Then they distributed hot buttered rolls, coffee poured from an enamel-ware pot, stuffed olives, potato salad, and angel’s-food cake.  There was, even in the most strictly conforming Gopher Prairie circles, a certain option as to collations.  The olives need not be stuffed.  Doughnuts were in some houses well thought of as a substitute for the hot buttered rolls.  But there was in all the town no heretic save Carol who omitted angel’s-food.

They ate enormously.  Carol had a suspicion that the thriftier housewives made the afternoon treat do for evening supper.

She tried to get back into the current.  She edged over to Mrs. McGanum.  Chunky, amiable, young Mrs. McGanum with her breast and arms of a milkmaid, and her loud delayed laugh which burst startlingly from a sober face, was the daughter of old Dr. Westlake, and the wife of Westlake’s partner, Dr. McGanum.  Kennicott asserted that Westlake and McGanum and their contaminated families were tricky, but Carol had found them gracious.  She asked for friendliness by crying to Mrs. McGanum, “How is the baby’s throat now?” and she was attentive while Mrs. McGanum rocked and knitted and placidly described symptoms.