Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

15. CHAPTER XV

THAT December she was in love with her husband.

She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but as the wife of a country physician. The realities of the doctor's household were colored by her pride.

Late at night, a step on the wooden porch, heard through her confusion of sleep; the storm-door opened; fumbling over the inner door-panels; the buzz of the electric bell. Kennicott muttering "Gol darn it," but patiently creeping out of bed, remembering to draw the covers up to keep her warm, feeling for slippers and bathrobe, clumping down-stairs.

From below, half-heard in her drowsiness, a colloquy in the pidgin-German of the farmers who have forgotten the Old Country language without learning the new:

"Hello, Barney, wass willst du?"

"Morgen, doctor. Die Frau ist ja awful sick. All night she been having an awful pain in de belly."

"How long she been this way? Wie lang, eh?"

"I dunno, maybe two days."

"Why didn't you come for me yesterday, instead of waking me up out of a sound sleep? Here it is two o'clock! So spat-warum, eh?"

"Nun aber, I know it, but she got soch a lot vorse last evening. I t'ought maybe all de time it go avay, but it got a lot vorse."

"Any fever?"

"Vell ja, I t'ink she got fever."

"Which side is the pain on?"

"Huh?"

"Das Schmertz--die Weh--which side is it on? Here?"

"So. Right here it is."

"Any rigidity there?"