“Sweating sanctimonious bully—my husband's uncle!” thought Carol.
She crept into Dave Dyer's. Dave held up his arms with, “Don't shoot! I surrender!” She smiled, but it occurred to her that for nearly five years Dave had kept up this game of pretending that she threatened his life.
As she went dragging through the prickly-hot street she reflected that a citizen of Gopher Prairie does not have jests—he has a jest. Every cold morning for five winters Lyman Cass had remarked, “Fair to middlin' chilly—get worse before it gets better.” Fifty times had Ezra Stowbody informed the public that Carol had once asked, “Shall I indorse this check on the back?” Fifty times had Sam Clark called to her, “Where'd you steal that hat?” Fifty times had the mention of Barney Cahoon, the town drayman, like a nickel in a slot produced from Kennicott the apocryphal story of Barney's directing a minister, “Come down to the depot and get your case of religious books—they're leaking!”
She came home by the unvarying route. She knew every house-front, every street-crossing, every billboard, every tree, every dog. She knew every blackened banana-skin and empty cigarette-box in the gutters. She knew every greeting. When Jim Howland stopped and gaped at her there was no possibility that he was about to confide anything but his grudging, “Well, haryuh t'day?”
All her future life, this same red-labeled bread-crate in front of the bakery, this same thimble-shaped crack in the sidewalk a quarter of a block beyond Stowbody's granite hitching-post——
She silently handed her purchases to the silent Oscarina. She sat on the porch, rocking, fanning, twitchy with Hugh's whining.
Kennicott came home, grumbled, “What the devil is the kid yapping about?”
“I guess you can stand it ten minutes if I can stand it all day!”
He came to supper in his shirt sleeves, his vest partly open, revealing discolored suspenders.
“Why don't you put on your nice Palm Beach suit, and take off that hideous vest?” she complained.