“Fine!  We need a hostess for the seventeenth of March.  Wouldn’t it be awfully original if you made it a St. Patrick’s Day bridge!  I’ll be tickled to death to help you with it.  I’m glad you’ve learned to play bridge.  At first I didn’t hardly know if you were going to like Gopher Prairie.  Isn’t it dandy that you’ve settled down to being homey with us!  Maybe we aren’t as highbrow as the Cities, but we do have the daisiest times and—­oh, we go swimming in summer, and dances and—­oh, lots of good times.  If folks will just take us as we are, I think we’re a pretty good bunch!”

“I’m sure of it.  Thank you so much for the idea about having a St. Patrick’s Day bridge.”

“Oh, that’s nothing.  I always think the Jolly Seventeen are so good at original ideas.  If you knew these other towns Wakamin and Joralemon and all, you’d find out and realize that G. P. is the liveliest, smartest town in the state.  Did you know that Percy Bresnahan, the famous auto manufacturer, came from here and——­Yes, I think that a St. Patrick’s Day party would be awfully cunning and original, and yet not too queer or freaky or anything.”

CHAPTER XI

I

She had often been invited to the weekly meetings of the Thanatopsis, the women’s study club, but she had put it off.  The Thanatopsis was, Vida Sherwin promised, “such a cozy group, and yet it puts you in touch with all the intellectual thoughts that are going on everywhere.”

Early in March Mrs. Westlake, wife of the veteran physician, marched into Carol’s living-room like an amiable old pussy and suggested, “My dear, you really must come to the Thanatopsis this afternoon.  Mrs. Dawson is going to be leader and the poor soul is frightened to death.  She wanted me to get you to come.  She says she’s sure you will brighten up the meeting with your knowledge of books and writings. (English poetry is our topic today.) So shoo!  Put on your coat!”

“English poetry?  Really?  I’d love to go.  I didn’t realize you were reading poetry.”

“Oh, we’re not so slow!”

Mrs. Luke Dawson, wife of the richest man in town, gaped at them piteously when they appeared.  Her expensive frock of beaver-colored satin with rows, plasters, and pendants of solemn brown beads was intended for a woman twice her size.  She stood wringing her hands in front of nineteen folding chairs, in her front parlor with its faded photograph of Minnehaha Falls in 1890, its “colored enlargement” of Mr. Dawson, its bulbous lamp painted with sepia cows and mountains and standing on a mortuary marble column.

She creaked, “O Mrs. Kennicott, I’m in such a fix.  I’m supposed to lead the discussion, and I wondered would you come and help?”

“What poet do you take up today?” demanded Carol, in her library tone of “What book do you wish to take out?”