Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (learn to read books txt) 📕

you out in the barn? It’d be so handy to the house, for you to get to meals on time, and you could keep an eye on the house if the girl was out and Ory and I went out visiting or to the Embroidery Circle.”

“In the barn!”

“Why, yes, in the old harness room. It’s partly ceiled, and we could put in some nice tar paper or even beaver board.”

“Mother Tozer, what the dickens do you think I’m planning to do? I’m not a hired man in a livery stable, or a kid looking for a place to put his birds’ eggs! I was thinking of opening an office as a physician!”

Bert made it all easy: “Yuh, but you aren’t much of a physician yet. You’re just getting your toes in.”

“I’m one hell of a good physician! Excuse me for cussing, Mother Tozer, but⁠—Why, nights in the hospital, I’ve held hundreds of lives in my hand! I intend⁠—”

“Look here, Mart,” said Bertie. “As we’re putting up the money⁠—I don’t want to be a tightwad but after all, a dollar is a dollar⁠—if we furnish the dough, we’ve got to decide the best way to spend it.”

Mr. Tozer looked thoughtful and said helplessly, “That’s so. No sense taking a risk, with the blame farmers demanding all the money they can get for their wheat and cream, and then deliberately going to work and not paying the interest on their loans. I swear, it don’t hardly pay to invest in mortgages any longer. No sense putting on lugs. Stands to reason you can look at a fellow’s sore throat or prescribe for an earache just as well in a nice simple little office as in some fool place all fixed up like a Moorhead saloon. Mother will see you have a comfortable corner in the barn⁠—”

Leora intruded: “Look here, Papa. I want you to lend us one thousand dollars, outright, to use as we see fit.” The sensation was immense. “We’ll pay you six percent⁠—no, we won’t; we’ll pay you five; that’s enough.”

“And mortgages bringing six, seven, and eight!” Bert quavered.

“Five’s enough. And we want our own say, absolute, as to how we use it⁠—to fit up an office or anything else.”

Mr. Tozer began, “That’s a foolish way to⁠—”

Bert took it away from him: “Ory, you’re crazy! I suppose we’ll have to lend you some money, but you’ll blame well come to us for it from time to time, and you’ll blame well take our advice⁠—”

Leora rose. “Either you do what I say, just exactly what I say, or Mart and I take the first train and go back to Zenith, and I mean it! Plenty of places open for him there, with a big salary, so we won’t have to be dependent on anybody!”

There was much conversation, most of which sounded like all the rest of it. Once Leora started for the stairs, to go up and pack; once Martin and she stood waving their napkins as they shook their fists, the general composition remarkably like the Laocoön.

Leora won.

They settled down to the most solacing fussing.

“Did you bring your trunk up from the depot?” asked Mr. Tozer.

“No sense leaving it there⁠—paying two bits a day storage!” fumed Bert.

“I got it up this morning,” said Martin.

“Oh, yes, Martin had it brought up this morning,” agreed Mrs. Tozer.

“You had it brought? Didn’t you bring it up yourself?” agonized Mr. Tozer.

“No. I had the fellow that runs the lumberyard haul it up for me,” said Martin.

“Well, gosh almighty, you could just as well’ve put it on a wheelbarrow and brought it up yourself and saved a quarter!” said Bert.

“But a doctor has to keep his dignity,” said Leora.

“Dignity, rats! Blame sight more dignified to be seen shoving a wheelbarrow than smoking them dirty cigarettes all the time!”

“Well, anyway⁠—Where’d you put it?” asked Mr. Tozer.

“It’s up in our room,” said Martin.

“Where’d you think we better put it when it’s unpacked? The attic is awful full,” Mr. Tozer submitted to Mrs. Tozer.

“Oh, I think Martin could get it in there.”

“Why couldn’t he put it in the barn?”

“Oh, not a nice new trunk like that!”

“What’s the matter with the barn?” said Bert. “It’s all nice and dry. Seems a shame to waste all that good space in the barn, now that you’ve gone and decided he mustn’t have his dear little office there!”

“Bertie,” from Leora, “I know what we’ll do. You seem to have the barn on your brain. You move your old bank there, and Martin’ll take the bank building for his office.”

“That’s entirely different⁠—”

“Now there’s no sense you two showing off and trying to be smart,” protested Mr. Tozer. “Do you ever hear your mother and I scrapping and fussing like that? When do you think you’ll have your trunk unpacked, Mart?” Mr. Tozer could consider barns and he could consider trunks but his was not a brain to grasp two such complicated matters at the same time.

“I can get it unpacked tonight, if it makes any difference⁠—”

“Well, I don’t suppose it really makes any special difference, but when you start to do a thing⁠—”

“Oh, what difference does it make whether he⁠—”

“If he’s going to look for an office, instead of moving right into the barn, he can’t take a month of Sundays getting unpacked and⁠—”

“Oh, good Lord, I’ll get it done tonight⁠—”

“And I think we can get it in the attic⁠—”

“I tell you it’s jam full already⁠—”

“We’ll go take a look at it after supper⁠—”

“Well now, I tell you when I tried to get that duck-boat in⁠—”

Martin probably did not scream, but he heard himself screaming. The free and virile land was leagues away and for years forgotten.

II

To find an office took a fortnight of diplomacy, and of discussion brightening three meals a day, every day. (Not that office-finding was the only thing the Tozers mentioned. They went thoroughly into every moment of Martin’s day; they commented on his digestion, his mail, his walks, his shoes that needed cobbling, and whether he had yet taken them to the farmer-trapper-cobbler, and