Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) đ
- Author: Sinclair Lewis
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As she crept into bed she was dazzled by Guyâs blazing grin. She experimented:
âBut Westlake is cleverer than his son-in-law, donât you think?â
âYes, Westlake may be old-fashioned and all that, but heâs got a certain amount of intuition, while McGanum goes into everything bullheaded, and butts his way through like a damn yahoo, and tries to argue his patients into having whatever he diagnoses them as having! About the best thing Mac can do is to stick to baby-snatching. Heâs just about on a par with this bone-pounding chiropractor female, Mrs. Mattie Gooch.â
âMrs. Westlake and Mrs. McGanum, thoughâ âtheyâre nice. Theyâve been awfully cordial to me.â
âWell, no reason why they shouldnât be, is there? Oh, theyâre nice enoughâ âthough you can bet your bottom dollar theyâre both plugging for their husbands all the time, trying to get the business. And I donât know as I call it so damn cordial in Mrs. McGanum when I holler at her on the street and she nods back like she had a sore neck. Still, sheâs all right. Itâs Ma Westlake that makes the mischief, pussyfooting around all the time. But I wouldnât trust any Westlake out of the whole lot, and while Mrs. McGanum seems square enough, you donât never want to forget that sheâs Westlakeâs daughter. You bet!â
âWhat about Dr. Gould? Donât you think heâs worse than either Westlake or McGanum? Heâs so cheapâ âdrinking, and playing pool, and always smoking cigars in such a cocky wayâ ââ
âThatâs all right now! Terry Gould is a good deal of a tin-horn sport, but he knows a lot about medicine, and donât you forget it for one second!â
She stared down Guyâs grin, and asked more cheerfully, âIs he honest, too?â
âOoooooooooo! Gosh Iâm sleepy!â He burrowed beneath the bedclothes in a luxurious stretch, and came up like a diver, shaking his head, as he complained, âHowâs that? Who? Terry Gould honest? Donât start me laughingâ âIâm too nice and sleepy! I didnât say he was honest. I said he had savvy enough to find the index in Grayâs Anatomy, which is more than McGanum can do! But I didnât say anything about his being honest. He isnât. Terry is crooked as a dogâs hind leg. Heâs done me more than one dirty trick. He told Mrs. Glorbach, seventeen miles out, that I wasnât up-to-date in obstetrics. Fat lot of good it did him! She came right in and told me! And Terryâs lazy. Heâd let a pneumonia patient choke rather than interrupt a poker game.â
âOh no. I canât believeâ ââ
âWell now, Iâm telling you!â
âDoes he play much poker? Dr. Dillon told me that Dr. Gould wanted him to playâ ââ
âDillon told you what? Whereâd you meet Dillon? Heâs just come to town.â
âHe and his wife were at Mr. Pollockâs tonight.â
âSay, uh, whatâd you think of them? Didnât Dillon strike you as pretty light-waisted?â
âWhy no. He seemed intelligent. Iâm sure heâs much more wide-awake than our dentist.â
âWell now, the old man is a good dentist. He knows his business. And Dillonâ âI wouldnât cuddle up to the Dillons too close, if I were you. All right for Pollock, and thatâs none of our business, but weâ âI think Iâd just give the Dillons the glad hand and pass âem up.â
âBut why? He isnât a rival.â
âThatâsâ âallâ âright!â Kennicott was aggressively awake now. âHeâll work right in with Westlake and McGanum. Matter of fact, I suspect they were largely responsible for his locating here. Theyâll be sending him patients, and heâll send all that he can get hold of to them. I donât trust anybody thatâs too much hand-in-glove with Westlake. You give Dillon a shot at some fellow thatâs just bought a farm here and drifts into town to get his teeth looked at, and after Dillon gets through with him, youâll see him edging around to Westlake and McGanum, every time!â
Carol reached for her blouse, which hung on a chair by the bed. She draped it about her shoulders, and sat up studying Kennicott, her chin in her hands. In the gray light from the small electric bulb down the hall she could see that he was frowning.
âWill, this isâ âI must get this straight. Someone said to me the other day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors hate each other, because of the moneyâ ââ
âWho said that?â
âIt doesnât matter.â
âIâll bet a hat it was your Vida Sherwin. Sheâs a brainy woman, but sheâd be a damn sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didnât let so much of her brains ooze out that way.â
âWill! O Will! Thatâs horrible! Aside from the vulgarityâ âSome ways, Vida is my best friend. Even if she had said it. Which, as a matter of fact, she didnât.â He reared up his thick shoulders, in absurd pink and green flannelette pajamas. He sat straight, and irritatingly snapped his fingers, and growled:
âWell, if she didnât say it, letâs forget her. Doesnât make any difference who said it, anyway. The point is that you believe it. God! To think you donât understand me any better than that! Money!â
(âThis is the first real quarrel weâve ever had,â she was agonizing.)
He thrust out his long arm and snatched his wrinkly vest from a chair. He took out a cigar, a match. He tossed the vest on the floor. He lighted the cigar and puffed savagely. He broke up the match and snapped the fragments at the footboard.
She suddenly saw the footboard of the bed as the foot-stone of the grave of love.
The room was drab-colored and ill-ventilatedâ âKennicott did not âbelieve in opening the windows so darn wide that you heat all outdoors.â The stale air seemed never to change. In the light from the hall they were two lumps of bedclothes with shoulders and
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