Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/109

 in red mittens. He ran down, he dropped his awkward bag on the platform and, unaware of the gaping furry farmers, they were lost in a kiss.

Years after, in a tropic noon, he remembered the freshness of her wind-cooled cheeks.

The train was gone, pounding out of the tiny station. It had stood like a dark wall beside the platform, protecting them, but now the light from the snowfields glared in on them and left them exposed and self-conscious.

"What—what's happened?" she fluttered. "No letters. I was so frightened."

"Off bumming. The dean suspended me—being fresh to profs. D' y' care?"

"Course not, if you wanted to—"

"I've come to marry you."

"I don't see how we can, dearest, but— All right. There'll be a lovely row with Dad." She laughed. "He's always so surprised and hurt when anything happens that he didn't plan out. It'll be nice to have you with me in the scrap, because you aren't supposed to know that he expects to plan out everything for everybody and— Oh, Sandy, I've been so lonely for you! Mother isn't really a bit sick, not the least bit, but they go on keeping me here. I think probably somebody hinted to Dad that folks were saying he must be broke, if his dear little daughter had to go off and learn nursing, and he hasn't worried it all out yet—it takes Andrew Jackson Tozer about a year to worry out anything. Oh, Sandy! You're here!"

After the clatter and jam of the train, the village seemed blankly empty. He could have walked around the borders of Wheatsylvania in ten minutes. Probably to Leora one building differed from another—she appeared to distinguish between the general store of Norblom and that of Frazier & Lamb—but to Martin the two-story wooden shacks creeping aimlessly along the wide Main Street were featureless and inappreciable. Then "There's our house, end of the next block," said Leora, as they turned the corner at the feed and implement store, and in a panic of embarrassment Martin wanted to halt. He saw a storm coming: Mr. Tozer denouncing him as a failure who desired to ruin Leora, Mrs. Tozer weeping.

"Say—say—say—have you told 'em about me?" he stammered.