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A-roving I will go,"
she chanted exultantly to herself.
"What's 'at?" inquired the porter politely.
"I said: `Brush me off.'"
The long wires of the telegraph-poles doubled; two tracks ran up beside the train-- three-- four; came a
succession of white-roofed houses, a glimpse of a trolley-car with frosted windows, streets-- more
streets-- the city.
She stood for a dazed moment in the frosty station before she saw three fur-bundled figures descending upon
her.
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The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories
"There she is!"
"Oh, Sally Carrol!"
Sally Carrol dropped her bag.
"Hi!"
A faintly familiar icy-cold face kissed her, and then she was in a group of faces all apparently emitting great
clouds of heavy smoke; she was shaking hands. There were Gordon, a short, eager man of thirty who looked
like an amateur knocked-about model for Harry, and his wife, Myra, a listless lady with flaxen hair under a
fur automobile cap. Almost immediately Sally Carrol thought of her as vaguely Scandinavian. A cheerful
chauffeur adopted her bag, and amid ricochets of half-phrases, exclamations, and perfunctory listless "my
dears" from Myra, they swept each other from the station.
Then they were in a sedan bound through a crooked succession of snowy streets where dozens of little boys
were hitching sleds behind grocery wagons and automobiles.
"Oh," cried Sally Carrol, "I want to do that! Can we, Harry?"
"That's for kids. But we might-- -- "
"It looks like such a circus " she said regretfully.
Home was a rambling frame house set on a white lap of snow, and there she met a big, gray-haired man of
whom she approved, and a lady who was like an egg, and who kissed her-- these were Harry's parents. There
was a breathless indescribable hour crammed full of half-sentences, hot water, bacon and eggs and
confusion; and after that she was alone with Harry in the library, asking him if she dared smoke.
It was a large room with a Madonna over the fireplace and rows upon rows of books in covers of light gold
and dark gold and shiny red. All the chairs had little lace squares where one's head should rest, the couch was
just comfortable, the books looked as if they had been read-- some-- and Sally Carrol had an instantaneous
vision of the battered old library at home, with her father's huge medical books, and the oil-paintings of her
three great-uncles, and the old couch that had been mended up for forty-five years and was still luxurious to
dream in. This room struck her as being neither attractive nor particularly otherwise. It was simply a room
with a lot of fairly expensive things in it that all looked about fifteen years old.
"What do you think of it up here?" demanded Harry eagerly. "Does it surprise you? Is it what you expected, I
mean?"
"You are, Harry," she said quietly, and reached out her arms to him.
But after a brief kiss he seemed anxious to extort enthusiasm from her.
"The town, I mean. Do you like it? Can you feel the pep in the air?"
"Oh, Harry," she laughed, "you'll have to give me time. You can't just fling questions at me."
She puffed at her cigarette with a sigh of contentment.
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"One thing I want to ask you," he began rather apologetically; "you Southerners put quite an emphasis on
family, and all that-- not that it isn't quite all right, but you'll find it a little different here. I mean-- you'll
notice a lot of things that'll seem to you sort of vulgar display at first, Sally Carrol; but just remember that this
is a three-generation town. Everybody has a father, and about half of us have grandfathers. Back of that we
don't go."
"Of course," she murmured.
"Our grandfathers, you see, founded the place, and a lot of them had to take some pretty queer jobs while
they were doing the founding. For instance, there's one woman who at present is about the social model for
the town; well, her father was the first public ash man-- things like that."
"Why," said Sally Carrol, puzzled, "did you s'pose I was goin' to make remarks about people?"
"Not at all," interrupted Harry; "and I'm not apologizing for any one either. It's just that-- well, a Southern
girl came up here last summer and said some unfortunate things, and-- oh, I just thought I'd tell you."
Sally Carrol felt suddenly indignant-- as though she had been unjustly spanked-- but Harry evidently
considered the subject closed, for he went on with a great surge of enthusiasm.
"It's carnival time, you know. First in ten years. And there's an ice palace they're building now that's the first
they've had since eighty-five. Built out of blocks of the clearest ice they could find-- on a tremendous
scale."
She rose and walking to the window pushed aside the heavy Turkish portires and looked out.
"Oh!" she cried suddenly. "There's two little boys makin' a snow man! Harry, do you reckon I can go out an'
help 'em?"
"You dream! Come here and kiss me."
She left the window rather reluctantly.
"I don't guess this is a very kissable climate, is it? I mean, it makes you so you don't want to sit round, doesn't
it?"
"We're not going to. I've got a vacation for the first week you're here, and there's a dinner-dance to-night."
"Oh, Harry," she confessed, subsiding in a heap, half in his lap, half in the pillows, "I sure do feel confused. I
haven't got an idea whether I'll like it or not, an' I don't know what people expect, or anythin'. You'll have to
tell me, honey."
"I'll tell you," he said softly, "if you'll just tell me you're glad to be here."
"Glad-- just awful glad!" she whispered, insinuating herself into his arms in her own peculiar way. "Where
you are is home for me, Harry."
And as she said this she had the feeling for almost the first time in her life that she was acting a part.
That night, amid the gleaming candles of a dinner-party, where the men seemed to do most of the talking
while the girls sat in a haughty and expensive aloofness, even Harry's presence on her left failed to make her
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The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories
feel at home.
"They're a good-looking crowd, don't you think?" he demanded. "Just look round. There's Spud Hubbard,
tackle at Princeton last year, and Junie Morton-- he and the red-haired fellow next to him were both Yale
hockey captains; Junie was in my class. Why, the best athletes in the world come from these States round
here. This is a man's country, I tell you. Look at John J. Fishburn!"
"Who's he?" asked Sally Carol innocently.
"Don't you know?"
"I've heard the name."
"Greatest wheat man in the Northwest, and one of the greatest financiers in the country."
She turned suddenly to a voice on her right.
"I guess they forgot to introduce us. My name's Roger Patton."
"My name is Sally Carol Happer," she said graciously.
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