“But the unhappy woman doesn’t sound routine!”

“Her?  Just case of nerves.  You can’t do much with these marriage mix-ups.”

“But dear, please, will you tell me about the next case that you do think is interesting?”

“Sure.  You bet.  Tell you about anything that——­Say that’s pretty good salmon.  Get it at Howland’s?”

II

Four days after the Jolly Seventeen debacle Vida Sherwin called and casually blew Carol’s world to pieces.

“May I come in and gossip a while?” she said, with such excess of bright innocence that Carol was uneasy.  Vida took off her furs with a bounce, she sat down as though it were a gymnasium exercise, she flung out: 

“Feel disgracefully good, this weather!  Raymond Wutherspoon says if he had my energy he’d be a grand opera singer.  I always think this climate is the finest in the world, and my friends are the dearest people in the world, and my work is the most essential thing in the world.  Probably I fool myself.  But I know one thing for certain:  You’re the pluckiest little idiot in the world.”

“And so you are about to flay me alive.”  Carol was cheerful about it.

“Am I?  Perhaps.  I’ve been wondering—­I know that the third party to a squabble is often the most to blame:  the one who runs between A and B having a beautiful time telling each of them what the other has said.  But I want you to take a big part in vitalizing Gopher Prairie and so——­Such a very unique opportunity and——­Am I silly?”

“I know what you mean.  I was too abrupt at the Jolly Seventeen.”

“It isn’t that.  Matter of fact, I’m glad you told them some wholesome truths about servants. (Though perhaps you were just a bit tactless.) It’s bigger than that.  I wonder if you understand that in a secluded community like this every newcomer is on test?  People cordial to her but watching her all the time.  I remember when a Latin teacher came here from Wellesley, they resented her broad A. Were sure it was affected.  Of course they have discussed you——­”

“Have they talked about me much?”

“My dear!”

“I always feel as though I walked around in a cloud, looking out at others but not being seen.  I feel so inconspicuous and so normal—­so normal that there’s nothing about me to discuss.  I can’t realize that Mr. and Mrs. Haydock must gossip about me.”  Carol was working up a small passion of distaste.  “And I don’t like it.  It makes me crawly to think of their daring to talk over all I do and say.  Pawing me over!  I resent it.  I hate——­”

“Wait, child!  Perhaps they resent some things in you.  I want you to try and be impersonal.  They’d paw over anybody who came in new.  Didn’t you, with newcomers in College?”

“Yes.”

“Well then!  Will you be impersonal?  I’m paying you the compliment of supposing that you can be.  I want you to be big enough to help me make this town worth while.”