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When Carol talked about the Balkans, and the possibility of a German revolution, Kennicott yawned, "Oh yes, it's a great old scrap, but it's none of our business. Folks out here are too busy growing corn to monkey with any fool war that those foreigners want to get themselves into." It was Miles Bjornstam who said, "I can't figure it out.
He hitched out of his chair, made coffee, gave Carol a cup, and talked on, half defiant and half apologetic, half wistful for friendliness and half amused by her surprise at the discovery that there was a proletarian philosophy. At the door, she hinted: "Mr. Bjornstam, if you were I, would you worry when people thought you were affected?" "Huh? Kick 'em in the face!
"I told you that Westlake and his wife were jealous of us, and here you been chumming up to them and From what Dave tells me, Ma Westlake has been going around town saying you told her that you hate Aunt Bessie, and that you fixed up your own room because I snore, and you said Bjornstam was too good for Bea, and then, just recent, that you were sore on the town because we don't all go down on our knees and beg this Valborg fellow to come take supper with us.
She forgot her seasons of boredom. She said to Hugh, "We're two fat disreputable old minstrels roaming round the world," and he echoed her, "Roamin' round roamin' round." The high adventure, the secret place to which they both fled joyously, was the house of Miles and Bea and Olaf Bjornstam. Kennicott steadily disapproved of the Bjornstams.
She was convinced that she was gloriously content in her career as doctor's-wife. She tried to free herself from the speculation and disillusionment which had been twitching at her; sought to dismiss all the opinionation of an insurgent era. She wanted to shine upon the veal-faced bristly-bearded Lyman Cass as much as upon Miles Bjornstam or Guy Pollock.
He tried to get fresh, and tell what a rotten town this is, and Perce come right back at him, 'If you don't like this country, you better get out of it and go back to Germany, where you belong! Say, maybe us fellows didn't give Bjornstam the horse-laugh though! Oh, Perce is the white-haired boy in this burg, all rightee!"
Zitterel the Baptist minister, for Americanization work. At the Bon Ton, Carol heard Nat Hicks the tailor exulting: "Old Perce certainly pulled a good one on this fellow Bjornstam that always is shooting off his mouth. He's supposed to of settled down since he got married, but Lord, those fellows that think they know it all, they never change.
He stooped to examine the furnace flues; he straightened, glanced down at her, and hemmed, "Got to fix your furnace, no matter what else I do." The poorer houses of Gopher Prairie, where the services of Miles Bjornstam were a luxury which included the shanty of Miles Bjornstam were banked to the lower windows with earth and manure.
Bjornstam had not finished his work at noon, and she invited him to have dinner with Bea in the kitchen. She wished that she were independent enough to dine with these her guests. She considered their friendliness, she sneered at "social distinctions," she raged at her own taboos and she continued to regard them as retainers and herself as a lady.
There was but one picture a magazine color-plate of a steep-roofed village in the Harz Mountains which suggested kobolds and maidens with golden hair. Bjornstam did not fuss over her. He suggested, "Might throw open your coat and put your feet up on the box in front of the stove."
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