The boys, with their
unspoiled natures, were able to melt into the ranks of the
village-boy life at once, with no more friction than was indicated
by a couple of rough-and-tumble fights. They were sturdy fellows,
like their mother, and these fights gave them high rank.
Robert got along in a dull, smooth way with his neighbors. He was
too formal with them. He met them only at the meat shop and the
post office. They nodded genially and said, "Got settled yet?" And
he replied, "Quite comfortable, thank you." They felt his coldness.
Conversation halted when he came near and made him feel that he
was the subject of their talk. As a matter of fact, he generally was.
He was a source of great speculation with them. Some of them had
gone so far as to bet he wouldn't live a year. They all seemed
grotesque to him, so work-scarred and bent and hairy. Even the
men whose names he had known from childhood were queer to
him. They seemed shy and distant, too, not like his ideas of them.
To Mate they were almost caricatures. "What makes them look
so-so 'way behind the times, Robert?"
"Well, I suppose they are," said Robert. "Life in these coulees goes
on rather slower than in Chicago.
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