Babbitt | Page 7

here at home I always do have a light lunch."
"Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town? Yes, sure!
You'd have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new steward
hands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out of sorts,
this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side--but no, that
wouldn't be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was driving over
to Verg Gunch's, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right here it
was--kind of a sharp shooting pain. I--Where'd that dime go to? Why
don't you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an apple
every evening--an apple a day keeps the doctor away--but still, you
ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads."
"The last time I had prunes you didn't eat them."
"Well, I didn't feel like eating 'em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I think I
did eat some of 'em. Anyway--I tell you it's mighty important to--I was
saying to Verg Gunch, just last evening, most people don't take
sufficient care of their diges--"
"Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?"
"Why sure; you bet."
"Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket
that evening."
"Rats! The rest of 'em won't want to dress."
"Of course they will. You remember when you didn't dress for the
Littlefields' supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassed you
were."
"Embarrassed, hell! I wasn't embarrassed. Everybody knows I can put
on as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don't
happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All right
for a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when a
fellow's worked like the dickens all day, he doesn't want to go and

hustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks that
he's seen in just reg'lar ordinary clothes that same day."
"You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you
admitted you were glad I'd insisted on your dressing. You said you felt
a lot better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn't say 'Tux.'
It's 'dinner-jacket.'"
"Rats, what's the odds?"
"Well, it's what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heard
you calling it a 'Tux.'"
"Well, that's all right now! Lucile McKelvey can't pull anything on me!
Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad are
millionaires! I suppose you're trying to rub in your exalted social
position! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor,
Henry T., doesn't even call it a 'Tux.'! He calls it a 'bobtail jacket for a
ringtail monkey,' and you couldn't get him into one unless you
chloroformed him!"
"Now don't be horrid, George."
"Well, I don't want to be horrid, but Lord! you're getting as fussy as
Verona. Ever since she got out of college she's been too rambunctious
to live with--doesn't know what she wants--well, I know what she
wants!--all she wants is to marry a millionaire, and live in Europe, and
hold some preacher's hand, and simultaneously at the same time stay
right here in Zenith and be some blooming kind of a socialist agitator
or boss charity-worker or some damn thing! Lord, and Ted is just as
bad! He wants to go to college, and he doesn't want to go to college.
Only one of the three that knows her own mind is Tinka. Simply can't
understand how I ever came to have a pair of shillyshallying children
like Rone and Ted. I may not be any Rockefeller or James J.
Shakespeare, but I certainly do know my own mind, and I do keep right
on plugging along in the office and--Do you know the latest? Far as I
can figure out, Ted's new bee is he'd like to be a movie actor and--And
here I've told him a hundred times, if he'll go to college and law-school

and make good, I'll set him up in business and--Verona just exactly as
bad. Doesn't know what she wants. Well, well, come on! Aren't you
ready yet? The girl rang the bell three minutes ago."
V
Before he followed his wife, Babbitt stood at the westernmost window
of their room. This residential settlement, Floral Heights, was on a rise;
and though the center of the city was three miles away--Zenith had
between three and four hundred thousand inhabitants now--he could see
the top of the Second National Tower, an Indiana limestone building of
thirty-five stories.
Its shining walls rose against April sky to a simple cornice like a streak
of white fire. Integrity