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“But if it's these towns we've been passing that the farmers run to for relief from their bleakness —— Can't you understand? Just LOOK at them!”

Kennicott was amazed. Ever since childhood he had seen these towns from trains on this same line. He grumbled, “Why, what's the matter with 'em? Good hustling burgs. It would astonish you to know how much wheat and rye and corn and potatoes they ship in a year.”

“But they're so ugly.”

“I'll admit they aren't comfy like Gopher Prairie. But give 'em time.”

“What's the use of giving them time unless some one has desire and training enough to plan them? Hundreds of factories trying to make attractive motor cars, but these towns — left to chance. No! That can't be true. It must have taken genius to make them so scrawny!”

“Oh, they're not so bad,” was all he answered. He pretended that his hand was the cat and hers the mouse. For the first time she tolerated him rather than encouraged him. She was staring out at Schoenstrom, a hamlet of perhaps a hundred and fifty inhabitants, at which the train was stopping.