ing to himself every minute be careful not to make a mistake. She thought of Van Gogh's lumpy black figure hunched by cold trudging toward a dingy café, symbol of chilling dreariness; the greenish light cast from the French café was in retrospect more inspiring than Clem's formulized glorification of midweek prayer meeting. Van Gogh and Sherwood Anderson saw people as living beings, individuals, not patterns; their commentaries, even when wry or bitter, came from the heart. That was it, Clem had no love, no real interest in his people, only for the perfection of a pattern. Except in the "Hepaticas"; his one painting with that sweet hesitancy which made one's heart break for him.
An attendant set an impressive um of roses on the center table where lay the catalogs, and the redness warmed the room.
"I'm bowled over by the amount of work!" Vida said.
Accepting this as enthusiastic approval Clem, touched also by the floral gift, said, "I wonder who sent those, it makes me feel like a prima donna."
"Those must be Lucy's. You are the star today. Here come Semy and Mrs. Cornwallis."
"I wonder where he's been all day. He lit out at the crack of dawn. Fact is, our Semy's been mighty mysterious lately." He must ask Semy to get Mrs. Cornwallis to pose, she was striking, and one could underplay the repulsiveness without prettying up as Alveg Dahl did. It impressed people if you showed portraits of well knowns, as had happened with Lauter.
"I'll take Horta for a look around," Semy said with a broad grin. The bastard was on first-name terms already. Something sure was up from the way he smirked.
Semanter Klug had returned from Washington with a Christmas present from the Senator—Pop's job as managing editor of the Husker-Sun. Congress, the Senator had said, was growing fast, industries were springing up all over the state because of its strategic railroad facilities, and the newspaper needed a bright young feller who could grow with industry. "Pop's too set in his newspaper ideas and don't know how to cooperate with business," the Senator said. Herold, whom he had coached to pass on the information that Pop thought Lauter as a senator was a joke, an invention of Semy's, certainly had turned the trick. Semy had asked for a month to think it over, a request which greatly impressed the Senator who didn't
