§ 2
Mr. Schwirtz seemed to know everybody at the farm. He had been there only thirty-six hours, but already he called Mr. Cannon “Sam,” and knew that Miss Vincent’s married sister’s youngest child had recently passed away with a severe and quite unexpected attack of cholera morbus. Mr. Schwirtz introduced Una to the others so fulsomely that she was immediately taken into the inner political ring. He gave her a first lesson in auction pinochle also. They had music and recitations at ten, and Una’s shyness was so warmed away that she found herself reciting, “I’m Only Mammy’s Pickaninny Coon.”
She went candle-lighted up to a four-poster bed. As she lay awake, her job-branded mind could not keep entirely away from the office, the work she would have to do when she returned, the familiar series of indefinite worries and disconnected office pictures. But mostly she let the rustle of the breathing land inspirit her while she thought of Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz.
She knew that he was ungrammatical, but she denied that he was uncouth. His deep voice had been very kindly; his clipped mustache was trim; his nails, which had been ragged at that commercial-college lunch, were manicured now; he was sure of himself, while Walter Babson doubted and thrashed about. All of which meant that the tired office-woman was touchily defensive of the man who liked her.
She couldn’t remember just where she had learned it, but she knew that Mr. Schwirtz was a widower.
§ 3
The fact that she did not have to get up and go to the office was Una’s chief impression at awakening, but she was not entirely obtuse to the morning, to the chirp of a robin, the cluck of the hens, the creak of a hay-wagon, and the sweet smell of cattle. When she arose she looked down a slope of fields so far away that they seemed smooth as a lawn. Solitary, majestic trees cast long shadows over a hilly pasture of crisp grass worn to inviting paths by the cropping cattle. Beyond the valley was a range of the Berkshires with every tree distinct.
Una was tired, but the morning’s radiance inspired her. “My America—so beautiful! Why do we turn you into stuffy offices and ugly towns?” she marveled while she was dressing.
But as breakfast was not ready, her sudden wish to do something magnificent for America turned into what she called a “before-coffee grouch,” and she sat on the porch waiting for the bell, and hoping that the conversational Mr. Schwirtz wouldn’t come and converse. It was to his glory that he didn’t. He appeared in masterful white-flannel trousers and a pressed blue coat and a new Panama, which looked well on his fleshy but trim head. He said, “Mornin’,” cheerfully, and went to prowl about the farm.
All through the breakfast Una caught the effulgence of Mr. Schwirtz’s prosperous-looking solidness, and almost persuaded herself that his jowls and the slabs of fat along his neck were powerful muscles.