II

Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast.
But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the
upper hall he looked into Verona's bedroom and protested, "What's the
use of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciate
it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?"

He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two,
just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex and
God and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now
wearing. Ted--Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt--a decorative boy of seventeen.
Tinka--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and a
thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas.
Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really
disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it
was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!" It was the only
pet name in his vocabulary, except the "dear" and "hon." with which he
recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every morning.

He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his
soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him,
but Verona began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly there
returned to Babbitt the doubts regarding life and families and business
which had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had
fled.

Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg Leather
Company offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensberg