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Updated: May 20, 2025
"I made out I hadn't heard them sure! same as you wouldn't hear a boiler-factory! and I tried to look away I can tell you exactly how every tile looks in the ceiling of that lobby; there's one with brown spots on it like the face of the devil and all the time the people there they were packed in like sardines they kept making remarks about us, and Zilla went right on talking about the little chap, and screeching that 'folks like him oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's SUPPOSED to be for ladies and gentlemen, and 'Paul, will you kindly call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat? and Oof!
When I passed them each a plate of the fried meat, they ate greedily, making loud mouth-noises champings of worn teeth and sucking intakes of the breath, accompanied by a continuous spluttering and mumbling. After that, when I gave them each a mug of scalding tea, the noises ceased. Easement and content came into their faces. Zilla relaxed her sour mouth long enough to sigh her satisfaction.
Where Zilla mocked him as a country boy, Myra said indignantly that he was ever so much solider than the young dandies who had been born in the great city of Zenith an ancient settlement in 1897, one hundred and five years old, with two hundred thousand population, the queen and wonder of all the state and, to the Catawba boy, George Babbitt, so vast and thunderous and luxurious that he was flattered to know a girl ennobled by birth in Zenith.
They were plotting for the escape to Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump smilingness, "Does Paul get as tired after the winter's work as Georgie does?" then Zilla remembered an injury; and when Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the world stopped till something had been done about it. "Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes crazy, that's all!
That is the law, and it is a good law. It is not good to steal, wherefore it is the law that the man who steals must die. Whoso breaks the law must suffer hurt. It is a great hurt to die." "But if you kill the man, why do you not kill the dog?" I asked. Old Ebbits looked at me in childlike wonder, while Zilla sneered openly at the absurdity of my question.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so doggone common, Zilla!" She brooded over her linked fingers. "Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating!
It seems to be settled now, isn't it though of course Zilla keeps rooting for a nice expensive vacation in New York and Atlantic City, with the bright lights and the bootlegged cocktails and a bunch of lounge-lizards to dance with but the Babbitts and the Rieslings are sure-enough going to Lake Sunasquam, aren't we?
LISTEN! Paul's in jail. He shot his wife, he shot Zilla, this noon. She may not live." HE drove to the City Prison, not blindly, but with unusual fussy care at corners, the fussiness of an old woman potting plants. It kept him from facing the obscenity of fate. The attendant said, "Naw, you can't see any of the prisoners till three-thirty visiting-hour." It was three.
Sometimes Paul came over in the evening with his violin, and even Zilla was silent as the lonely man who had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out his dark soul in music. Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School.
Can you beat it! Of course I might of expected you to not stand by me! I might of expected you'd stick up for your own sex!" "Yes. Poor Zilla, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on Paul. She hasn't a single thing to do, in that little flat. And she broods too much. And she used to be so pretty and gay, and she resents losing it. And you were just as nasty and mean as you could be.
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