Carol forswore herself; declared that Gopher Prairie had the color of Algiers and the gaiety of Mardi Gras.

Yet the next afternoon she was pouncing on Mrs. Lyman Cass, the hook-nosed consort of the owner of the flour-mill.

Mrs. Cass’s parlor belonged to the crammed-Victorian school, as Mrs. Luke Dawson’s belonged to the bare-Victorian.  It was furnished on two principles:  First, everything must resemble something else.  A rocker had a back like a lyre, a near-leather seat imitating tufted cloth, and arms like Scotch Presbyterian lions; with knobs, scrolls, shields, and spear-points on unexpected portions of the chair.  The second principle of the crammed-Victorian school was that every inch of the interior must be filled with useless objects.

The walls of Mrs. Cass’s parlor were plastered with “hand-painted” pictures, “buckeye” pictures, of birch-trees, news-boys, puppies, and church-steeples on Christmas Eve; with a plaque depicting the Exposition Building in Minneapolis, burnt-wood portraits of Indian chiefs of no tribe in particular, a pansy-decked poetic motto, a Yard of Roses, and the banners of the educational institutions attended by the Casses’ two sons—­Chicopee Falls Business College and McGillicuddy University.  One small square table contained a card-receiver of painted china with a rim of wrought and gilded lead, a Family Bible, Grant’s Memoirs, the latest novel by Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter, a wooden model of a Swiss chalet which was also a bank for dimes, a polished abalone shell holding one black-headed pin and one empty spool, a velvet pin-cushion in a gilded metal slipper with “Souvenir of Troy, N. Y.” stamped on the toe, and an unexplained red glass dish which had warts.

Mrs. Cass’s first remark was, “I must show you all my pretty things and art objects.”

She piped, after Carol’s appeal: 

“I see.  You think the New England villages and Colonial houses are so much more cunning than these Middlewestern towns.  I’m glad you feel that way.  You’ll be interested to know I was born in Vermont.”

“And don’t you think we ought to try to make Gopher Prai——­”

“My gracious no!  We can’t afford it.  Taxes are much too high as it is.  We ought to retrench, and not let the city council spend another cent.  Uh——­Don’t you think that was a grand paper Mrs. Westlake read about Tolstoy?  I was so glad she pointed out how all his silly socialistic ideas failed.”

What Mrs. Cass said was what Kennicott said, that evening.  Not in twenty years would the council propose or Gopher Prairie vote the funds for a new city hall.

V

Carol had avoided exposing her plans to Vida Sherwin.  She was shy of the big-sister manner; Vida would either laugh at her or snatch the idea and change it to suit herself.  But there was no other hope.  When Vida came in to tea Carol sketched her Utopia.