“It’s an outrage on æsthetics, that shade,” she said to herself. “I wish mother hadn’t bought it until I got home. They do need me here.”
“It’s the same old place,” said Barbara, at four o’clock the next afternoon, “the same dear, old, sleepy place. Aside from the fact that I find some more tucks let down in gowns and some more inches added to trousers each year, I don’t think Auburn changes anything—even her mind—from going-away time to coming-home time. Procrastination is the spice of life, here.”
“The things that keep a town awake are usually sent away to college,” said her mother, slyly. “But Auburn is solid, as well as conservative.”
“It’s pitifully, painfully solid,” said Barbara. “If it only realized its own deficiencies, there would be hope for it. But it is always so complacent and contented with itself. The road that leads up the hill to Dyer’s Corner is characteristic of the whole town. Some man with plenty of time on his hands—or for his feet—ambled along up the hill in the beginning of things, and for fifty years the people have followed his long, devious path, rather than branch out and originate another easier. I believe that any sign of progress, civic or intellectual, would cut Auburn to the quick,—if there is any quick to cut, in the town.”
“Haven’t you noted the fine schedule on our electric-car line?” laughed her mother.
“That’s just what I was thinking of. I commented on the improved time that the cars make to Miss Bates, this morning. To my surprise she stiffened at once. ‘You ain’t the first to make complaint,’ she said. ‘There ain’t no need of running a street-car like a fire-engine; and they say that since this new schedule has been fixed, the conductors won’t deliver dinner-pails to the factory men, or hold the car for you while you go on a short errand. Auburn ain’t going to tolerate that.’ Doesn’t that sound just like Miss Bates, and like Auburn?”
“That’s right; run down Auburn,” said Jack, tossing his strap of school-books on a chair, and hanging his cap on the rubber-plant. “You’ll make yourself good and popular if you go about expressing opinions like that in public. Auburn was good enough for Airy Fairy Lilian in high-school days, but having received four years of ‘culchaw,’ and a starter on the alphabet to add to her name, the plebeian ways of the old home-place jar her nerves. I like your loyalty, Mistress Barbara!”
“That is totally uncalled for, Jack,” said Barbara. “I like Auburn as much as you do. But it’s not an intellectual affection. I can’t help seeing, in spite of my love for it, that the town is raw and Western,—and painfully crude.”
“An intellectual affection! That’s as bad as a hygienic plum-pudding,” groaned Jack. “If I didn’t have to go out to coach the football team in five minutes, I would sit down and express my sympathy at the stultifying life which you must lead for the next sixty years. Unless, of course, we marry you off. There is always that alternative.”