Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/256

 baby; and it was to Leora that Mrs. Schlemihl, though publicly she was rompish and serene with her porker of a husband, burst out, "If that man would only quit pawing me—reaching for me—slobbering on me! I hate it here! I will have my winter in New York—alone!"

The childish Martin Arrowsmith, so unworthy of Leora's old quiet wisdoms, was not content with her acceptance by the Group. When she appeared with a hook unfastened or her hair like a crow's nest, he worried, and said things about her "sloppiness" which he later regretted.

"Why can't you take a little time to make yourself attractive? God knows you haven't anything else to do! Great Jehoshaphat, can't you even sew on buttons?"

But Clara Tredgold laughed, "Leora, I do think you have the sweetest back, but do you mind if I pin you up before the others come?"

It happened after a party which lasted till two, when Mrs. Schlemihl had worn the new frock from Lucile's and Jack Brundidge (by day vice-president and sales-manager of the Maize Mealies Company) had danced what he belligerently asserted to be a Finnish polka, that when Martin and Leora were driving home in a borrowed Health Department car he snarled, "Lee, why can't you ever take any trouble with what you wear? Here this morning—or yesterday morning—you were going to mend that blue dress, and as far as I can figure out you haven't done a darn' thing the whole day but sit around and read, and then you come out with that ratty embroidery—"

"Will you stop the car!" she cried.

He stopped it, astonished. The headlights made ridiculously important a barbed-wire fence, a litter of milkweeds, a bleak reach of gravel road.

She demanded, "Do you want me to become a harem beauty? I could. I could be a floosey. But I've never taken the trouble. Oh, Sandy, I won't go on fighting with you. Either I'm the foolish sloppy wife that I am, or I'm nothing. What do you want? Do you want a real princess like Clara Tredgold, or do you want me, that don't care a hang where we go or what we do as long as we stand by each other? You do such a lot of worrying. I'm tired of it. Come on now. What do you want?"

"I don't want anything but you. But can't you understand—I'm not just a climber—I want us both to be equal to