Part 29 (1/2)
They found her a matron of thirty-odd; fresh-cheeked, round-faced like her husband, typically German, without his accent of the Fatherland
Hazel at once appropriated the baby It lay peacefully in her arly sounds
”The little dear!” Hazel murmured
”Lauer, our name iss,” the staff, mine is,” Bill completed the informal introduction
”So?” Lauer responded ”Id hass a Gerenerations back,” Bill answered ”I guess I'm as American as they make 'em”
”I aht mine bibe--mit your vife's per the bowl of his pipe with a stubby forefinger, ”I aht oop
I serf in der ara Dere Ibrreweries Afder dot I learn to be a carpenter Now I ae slafe”
He laughed at his own conceit, a great, roaring bellow that filled the rooht track,” Bill nodded ”It's a pity more people don't take the same notion What do you think of this country, anyway?”
”It iss goot,” Lauer answered briefly, and with unhesitating certainty
”It iss goot Vor der boor man it iss--it iss salfation Mit fife huntret tollars und hiss two hants he can hi be sure off”
Beside Hazel Lauer's wife absently caressed the blond head of her four-year-old daughter
”No, I don't think I'll ever get lonesoot lots of work and my babies Of course, it's natural I'din now and then to chat But a person can't have it all And I'd do anything to have a roof of our own, and to have it some place where our livin' don't depend on a pay envelope Oh, a city's dreadful, I think, when your next meal almost depends on your man holdin' his job I've lived in town ever since I was fifteen I lost three babies in Milwaukee--hot weather, bad air, bad , unless you have plenty of money Many a time I've sat and cried, just from thinkin' how bad I wanted a little place of our ohere there was grass and trees and a piece of ground for a garden And I knee'd never be able to buy it We couldn't get ahead enough”
”Und so,” her husband took up the tale, ”I hear off diss country, vere lant can be for noddings got Und so we scrape und pinch und safe nickels und dimes for fife year Und here ve are All der vay froon, yes Mit two mules In Ashcroft I buy der cow, so dot ve haf der fresh milk Und dot iss lucky For von mule iss die on der road So I aon mit von mule und Gretchen, der cow”
Hazel had a momentary vision of unrelated hardshi+ps by the way, and she wondered how the h and his wife s heat of narrow streets in reen shade She had seen so of a city's poverty But she knew also the privations of the trail Two thousand on! And at the journey's end only a rude cabin of logs--and years of steady toil Isolation in a huge and lonely land
Yet these folk were happy She wondered briefly if her own viewpoint were possibly askew She knew that she could not face such a prospect except in utter rebellion Not now The bleak peaks of the Klappan rose up before her mind's eye, the picture of five horses dead in the snow, the wolves that snapped and snarled over their bones She shuddered She was still pondering this when she and Bill dismounted at home
CHAPTER XXV
THE DOLLAR CHASERS
Granville took them to its bosom with a haste and earnestness that made Hazel catch her breath The Marshes took possession of them upon their arrival, and they were no more than domiciled under the Marsh roof than all her old friends flocked to call Tactfully none so much as acy--the disposition of which suentleenial ats lie Many a ti the that unfortunate period But once aet that they had ever harbored unjust thoughts of her, she took their proffered friendshi+p at its face value
It was quite gratifying to know that many of them envied her She learned frorown by some mysterious process of Granville tattle, until it had reached the charures of convention
That in itself was sufficient to establish their prestige In a society that lived by and for the dollar, and s with its dollar yardstick, that murmured item opened--indeed, forced open--many doors to herself and her husband which would otherwise have reht out and made much of, and it pleased her to think that soenuinely sorry that they had once stood aloof They attempted to atone, it would seem For three weeks they lived in an atiddy little whirl that grew daily more attractive, so far as Hazel was concerned
There had been changes Jack Barrow had consoled hiood, in the popular phrase, at the real-estate game The Marshes, as she had previously known theentility But they had co their pile to cut a lot of social ice Kitty Brooks' husband was now the head of the biggest advertising agency in Granville Hazel was glad of that mild success Kitty Brooks was the one person for whom she had always kept a warm corner in her heart Kitty had stood stoutly and unequivocally by her when all the others had viewed her with a dubious eye Aside fro people who revolved in their same old orbits Two years will upon occasion es in soe, she found herself caught up and carried along on a pleasant tide
She was inordinately proud of Bill, when she coe Granvillehe would adopt a little more readily the Granville viewpoint He fell short of it, or went beyond it, she could not be sure which; she had an uneasy feeling sos and Granville folk with amused tolerance, not unmixed with contempt But he attracted attention Whenever he was minded to talk he found ready listeners
And he did not seeed to various functions, matinees, and the like He fell naturally into that mode of existence, no matter that it was in profound contrast to his previous e satisfaction in that Anything but a well-bred nized that quality in Bill Wagstaff even when he had carried her bodily into the wilderness against her explicit desire thatan unsuspected polish She used to wonder a Bill whom she had with her eyes seen hah”