Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/457

 "He— Would he have my care if I died He is a nice kid, too! I hope he won't be a Rich Man Perhaps ten years from now he'll come to me here."

"And live like this?"

"Sure—unless I'm broke. Then he won't live so well. We have meat practically every day now!"

"I see. And suppose your Terry Wickett should marry some waitress or some incredibly stupid rustic? From what you've told me, he rather fancies that sort of girl!"

"Well, either he and I would beat her, together, or it would be the one thing that could break me."

"Martin, aren't you perhaps a little insane?"

"Oh, absolutely! And how I enjoy it! Though you— You look here now, Joy! We're insane but we're not cranks! Yesterday an 'esoteric healer' came here because he thought this was a free colony, and Terry walked him twenty miles, and then I think he threw him in the lake. No. Gosh. Let me think." He scratched his chin. "I don't believe we're insane. We're farmers."

"Martin, it's too infinitely diverting to find you becoming a fanatic, and all the while trying to wriggle out of being a fanatic. You've left common sense. I am common sense. I believe in bathing! Good-by!"

"Now you look here. By golly—"

She was gone, reasonable and triumphant.

As the chauffeur manœuvered among the stumps of the clearing, for a moment Joyce looked out from her car, and they stared at each other, through tears. They had never been so frank, so pitiful, as in this one unarmored look which recalled every jest, every tenderness, every twilight they had known together. But the car rolled on unhalted, and he remembered that he had been doing an experiment—

On a certain evening of May, Congressman Almus Pickerbaugh was dining with the President of the United States.

"When the campaign is over, Doctor," said the President, "I hope we shall see you a cabinet-member—the first Secretary of Health and Eugenics in the country!"

That evening, Dr. Rippleton Holabird was addressing a meeting of celebrated thinkers, assembled by the League of