During her three years of library work several men showed diligent interest in her—­the treasurer of a fur-manufacturing firm, a teacher, a newspaper reporter, and a petty railroad official.  None of them made her more than pause in thought.  For months no male emerged from the mass.  Then, at the Marburys’, she met Dr. Will Kennicott.

CHAPTER II

It was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted to the flat of the Johnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper.  Mrs. Marbury was a neighbor and friend of Carol’s sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling representative of an insurance company.  They made a specialty of sandwich-salad-coffee lap suppers, and they regarded Carol as their literary and artistic representative.  She was the one who could be depended upon to appreciate the Caruso phonograph record, and the Chinese lantern which Mr. Marbury had brought back as his present from San Francisco.  Carol found the Marburys admiring and therefore admirable.

This September Sunday evening she wore a net frock with a pale pink lining.  A nap had soothed away the faint lines of tiredness beside her eyes.  She was young, naive, stimulated by the coolness.  She flung her coat at the chair in the hall of the flat, and exploded into the green-plush living-room.  The familiar group were trying to be conversational.  She saw Mr. Marbury, a woman teacher of gymnastics in a high school, a chief clerk from the Great Northern Railway offices, a young lawyer.  But there was also a stranger, a thick tall man of thirty-six or -seven, with stolid brown hair, lips used to giving orders, eyes which followed everything good-naturedly, and clothes which you could never quite remember.

Mr. Marbury boomed, “Carol, come over here and meet Doc Kennicott—­Dr. Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie.  He does all our insurance-examining up in that neck of the woods, and they do say he’s some doctor!”

As she edged toward the stranger and murmured nothing in particular, Carol remembered that Gopher Prairie was a Minnesota wheat-prairie town of something over three thousand people.

“Pleased to meet you,” stated Dr. Kennicott.  His hand was strong; the palm soft, but the back weathered, showing golden hairs against firm red skin.

He looked at her as though she was an agreeable discovery.  She tugged her hand free and fluttered, “I must go out to the kitchen and help Mrs. Marbury.”  She did not speak to him again till, after she had heated the rolls and passed the paper napkins, Mr. Marbury captured her with a loud, “Oh, quit fussing now.  Come over here and sit down and tell us how’s tricks.”  He herded her to a sofa with Dr. Kennicott, who was rather vague about the eyes, rather drooping of bulky shoulder, as though he was wondering what he was expected to do next.  As their host left them, Kennicott awoke: 

“Marbury tells me you’re a high mogul in the public library.  I was surprised.  Didn’t hardly think you were old enough.  I thought you were a girl, still in college maybe.”