Summary

Dell began associating with Arthur more in Chapter 54. On one particular outing, Arthur was driving 90 miles per hour, and as his Buick approached six pheasants in the road, he neither slowed down nor went around them. The car struck them in a whirl of bird bodies and feathers and Arthur merely said, “You see a lot of those birds out here” (310). In complete shock and disbelief, Dell said “I was astonished” (310). They stopped at a café for lunch and Dell wanted to ask Arthur why he hit the birds but did not. Arthur explained to him how unnatural and difficult it was to live in Canada, and told him how the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy paid for peasants to relocate to Canada. He also asked Dell if he thought of himself as “unsteady” (311) (Mildred had told her brother so) and if he...