Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

33. CHAPTER XXXIII (continued)

Her fingers tightened about his thumb as she perceived the hot low room, the pounding of pressing-irons, the reek of scorched cloth, and Erik among giggling gnomes. His fingertip crept through the opening of her glove and smoothed her palm. She snatched her hand away, stripped off her glove, tucked her hand back into his.

He was saying something about a "wonderful person." In her tranquillity she let the words blow by and heeded only the beating wings of his voice.

She was conscious that he was fumbling for impressive speech.

"Say, uh--Carol, I've written a poem about you."

"That's nice. Let's hear it."

"Damn it, don't be so casual about it! Can't you take me seriously?"

"My dear boy, if I took you seriously----! I don't want us to be hurt more than--more than we will be. Tell me the poem. I've never had a poem written about me!"

"It isn't really a poem. It's just some words that I love because it seems to me they catch what you are. Of course probably they won't seem so to anybody else, but---- Well----

Little and tender and merry and wise
With eyes that meet my eyes.

Do you get the idea the way I do?"

"Yes! I'm terribly grateful!" And she was grateful-- while she impersonally noted how bad a verse it was.

She was aware of the haggard beauty in the lowering night. Monstrous tattered clouds sprawled round a forlorn moon; puddles and rocks glistened with inner light. They were passing a grove of scrub poplars, feeble by day but looming now like a menacing wall. She stopped. They heard the branches dripping, the wet leaves sullenly plumping on the soggy earth.