Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) đ
- Author: Sinclair Lewis
Book online «Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) đ». Author Sinclair Lewis
âWhy, you havenât been sitting and chinning with him till eleven oâclock?â
âOf course there were some other people there andâ âWill! What do you think of Dr. Westlake?â
âWestlake? Why?â
âI noticed him on the street today.â
âWas he limping? If the poor fish would have his teeth X-rayed, Iâll bet nine and a half cents heâd find an abscess there. âRheumatismâ he calls it. Rheumatism, hell! Heâs behind the times. Wonder he doesnât bleed himself! Wellllllllâ ââ A profound and serious yawn. âI hate to break up the party, but itâs getting late, and a doctor never knows when heâll get routed out before morning.â (She remembered that he had given this explanation, in these words, not less than thirty times in the year.) âI guess we better be trotting up to bed. Iâve wound the clock and looked at the furnace. Did you lock the front door when you came in?â
They trailed upstairs, after he had turned out the lights and twice tested the front door to make sure it was fast. While they talked they were preparing for bed. Carol still sought to maintain privacy by undressing behind the screen of the closet door. Kennicott was not so reticent. Tonight, as every night, she was irritated by having to push the old plush chair out of the way before she could open the closet door. Every time she opened the door she shoved the chair. Ten times an hour. But Kennicott liked to have the chair in the room, and there was no place for it except in front of the closet.
She pushed it, felt angry, hid her anger. Kennicott was yawning, more portentously. The room smelled stale. She shrugged and became chatty:
âYou were speaking of Dr. Westlake. Tell meâ âyouâve never summed him up: Is he really a good doctor?â
âOh yes, heâs a wise old coot.â
(âThere! You see there is no medical rivalry. Not in my house!â she said triumphantly to Guy Pollock.)
She hung her silk petticoat on a closet hook, and went on, âDr. Westlake is so gentle and scholarlyâ ââ
âWell, I donât know as Iâd say he was such a whale of a scholar. Iâve always had a suspicion he did a good deal of four-flushing about that. He likes to have people think he keeps up his French and Greek and Lord knows what all; and heâs always got an old Dago book lying around the sitting-room, but Iâve got a hunch he reads detective stories âbout like the rest of us. And I donât know where heâd ever learn so dog-gone many languages anyway! He kind of lets people assume he went to Harvard or Berlin or Oxford or somewhere, but I looked him up in the medical register, and he graduated from a hick college in Pennsylvania, way back in 1861!â
âBut this is the important thing: Is he an honest doctor?â
âHow do you mean âhonestâ? Depends on what you mean.â
âSuppose you were sick. Would you call him in? Would you let me call him in?â
âNot if I were well enough to cuss and bite, I wouldnât! No, sir! I wouldnât have the old fake in the house. Makes me tired, his everlasting palavering and soft-soaping. Heâs all right for an ordinary bellyache or holding some fool womanâs hand, but I wouldnât call him in for an honest-to-God illness, not much I wouldnât, no-sir! You know I donât do much backbiting, but same timeâ âIâll tell you, Carrrie: Iâve never got over being sore at Westlake for the way he treated Mrs. Jonderquist. Nothing the matter with her, what she really needed was a rest, but Westlake kept calling on her and calling on her for weeks, almost every day, and he sent her a good big fat bill, too, you can bet! I never did forgive him for that. Nice decent hardworking people like the Jonderquists!â
In her batiste nightgown she was standing at the bureau engaged in the invariable rites of wishing that she had a real dressing-table with a triple mirror, of bending toward the streaky glass and raising her chin to inspect a pinhead mole on her throat, and finally of brushing her hair. In rhythm to the strokes she went on:
âBut, Will, there isnât any of what you might call financial rivalry between you and the partnersâ âWestlake and McGanumâ âis there?â
He flipped into bed with a solemn back-somersault and a ludicrous kick of his heels as he tucked his legs under the blankets. He snorted, âLord no! I never begrudge any man a nickel he can get away from meâ âfairly.â
âBut is Westlake fair? Isnât he sly?â
âSly is the word. Heâs a fox, that boy!â
She saw Guy Pollockâs grin in the mirror. She flushed.
Kennicott, with his arms behind his head, was yawning:
âYump. Heâs smooth, too smooth. But I bet I make prettâ near as much as Westlake and McGanum both together, though Iâve never wanted to grab more than my just share. If anybody wants to go to the partners instead of to me, thatâs his business. Though I must say it makes me tired when Westlake gets hold of the Dawsons. Here Luke Dawson had been coming to me for every toe-ache and headache and a lot of little things that just wasted my time, and then when his grandchild was here last summer and had summer-complaint, I suppose, or something like that, probablyâ âyou know, the time you and I drove up to Lac-qui-Meurtâ âwhy, Westlake got hold of Ma Dawson, and scared her to death, and made her think the kid had appendicitis, and, by golly, if he and McGanum didnât operate, and holler their heads off about the terrible adhesions they found, and what a regular Charley and Will Mayo they were for classy surgery. They let on that if theyâd waited two hours more the kid would have developed peritonitis, and God knows what all; and then they collected a nice fat hundred and fifty dollars. And probably theyâd have charged three hundred, if they hadnât
Comments (0)