“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 was in the tower, and decision. It bore its strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Babbitt stared, the nervousness was soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted in reverence. All he articulated was “That’s one lovely sight!” but he was inspired by the rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheld the tower as a temple-spire of the religion of business, a faith passionate, exalted, surpassing common men; and as he clumped down to breakfast he whistled the ballad “Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo” as though it were a hymn melancholy and noble. CHAPTER II I Relieved of Babbitt’s bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wife expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much too experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly into impersonality. It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room, and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously gave up the duty of being manly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmth and laugh at the January gale.