Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/114

 alienation which the pomposity of weddings sometimes casts between lovers, they sighed, "Now what are we going to do—what are we going to do?"

At the Wheatsylvania station they were met by the whole family, rampant.

Bert had suspected elopement. He had searched half a dozen towns by long-distance telephone, and got through to the county clerk just after the license had been granted. It did not soften Bert's mood to have the clerk remark that if Martin and Leora were of age, there was nothing he could do, and he didn't "care a damn who's talking—I'm running this office!"

Bert had come to the station determined to make Martin perfect, even as Bert Tozer was perfect, and to do it right now.

It was a dreadful evening in the Tozer mansion.

Mr. Tozer said, with length, that Martin had undertaken responsibilities.

Mrs. Tozer wept, and said that she hoped Ory had not, for certain reasons, had to be married—

Bert said that if such was the case, he'd kill Martin—

Ada Quist said that Ory could now see what came of pride and boasting about going off to her old Zenith—

Mr. Tozer said that there was one good thing about it, anyway: Ory could see for herself that they couldn't let her go back to nursing school and get into more difficulties—

Martin from time to time offered remarks to the effect that he was a good young man, a wonderful bacteriologist, and able to take care of his wife; but no one save Leora listened.

Bert further propounded (while his father squeaked, "Now don't be too hard on the boy,") that if Martin thought for one single second that he was going to get one red cent out of the Tozers because he'd gone and butted in where nobody'd invited him, he, Bert, wanted to know about it, that was all, he certainly wanted to know about it!

And Leora watched them, turning her little head from one to another. Once she came over to press Martin's hand. In the roughest of the storm, when Martin was beginning to glare, she drew from a mysterious pocket a box of very bad cigarettes, and lighted one. None of the Tozers had discovered that she smoked. Whatever they thought about her sex morals, her infidelity to United Brethrenism, and her general dementia, they had not suspected that she could commit such an