in the Cities.

She went home soothed by confession, inspirited by finding a new friend.


IV


The tragicomedy of the "domestic situation."

Oscarina went back home to help on the farm, and Carol had a succession
of maids, with gaps between. The lack of servants was becoming one
of the most cramping problems of the prairie town. Increasingly the
farmers' daughters rebelled against village dullness, and against the
unchanged attitude of the Juanitas toward "hired girls." They went off
to city kitchens, or to city shops and factories, that they might be
free and even human after hours.

The Jolly Seventeen were delighted at Carol's desertion by the loyal
Oscarina. They reminded her that she had said, "I don't have any trouble
with maids; see how Oscarina stays on."

Between incumbencies of Finn maids from the North Woods, Germans from
the prairies, occasional Swedes and Norwegians and Icelanders, Carol did
her own work--and endured Aunt Bessie's skittering in to tell her how to
dampen a broom for fluffy dust, how to sugar doughnuts, how to stuff
a goose. Carol was deft, and won shy praise from Kennicott, but as her
shoulder blades began to sting, she wondered how many millions of women
had lied to themselves during the death-rimmed years through which they
had pretended to enjoy the puerile methods persisting in housework.