[Illustration: We gathered wood and made a fire]

THE PRAIRIE CHILD

By ARTHUR STRINGER

Author of

"Are All Men Alike and the Lost Titian, " "The Prairie Mother, ""The Prairie Wife, " "The Wine of Life, " "The Door of Dread, ""The Man Who Couldn't Sleep, " etc. 

[Illustration]

With Frontispiece by

E. F. WARD

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Printed in U. S. A. 

Copyright 1922

The Pictorial Review Company

Copyright 1922

The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Printed in the United States of America

THE PRAIRIE CHILD

_Friday the Eighth of March_

"But the thing I can't understand, Dinky-Dunk, is how you ever_could_. "

"Could what?" my husband asked in an aerated tone of voice. 

I had to gulp before I got it out. 

"Could kiss a woman like that, " I managed to explain. 

Duncan Argyll McKail looked at me with a much cooler eye than I hadexpected. If he saw my shudder, he paid no attention to it. 

"On much the same principle, " he quietly announced, "that the Chineseeat birds' nests. "

"Just what do you mean by that?" I demanded, resenting the fact thathe could stand as silent as a December beehive before my moroselyquestioning eyes. 

"I mean that, being married, you've run away with the idea that allbirds' nests are made out of mud and straw, with possibly a garnishof horse hairs. But if you'd really examine these edible nests you'dfind they were made of surprisingly appealing and succulent tendrils. They're quite appetizing, you may be sure, or they'd never be eaten!"

I stood turning this over, exactly as I've seen my Dinkie turn over anunexpectedly rancid nut. 

"Aren't you, under the circumstances, being rather stupidly clever?" Ifinally asked. 

"When I suppose you'd rather see me cleverly stupid?" he found theheart to suggest. 

"But that woman, to me, always looked like a frog, " I protested, doingmy best to duplicate his pose of impersonality. 

"Well, she doesn't make love like a frog, " he retorted with his firstbetraying touch of anger. I turned to the window, to the end that myEliza-Crossing-the-Ice look wouldn't be entirely at his mercy. Abelated March blizzard was slapping at the panes and cuffing thehouse-corners. At the end of a long winter, I knew, tempers were aptto be short. But this was much more than a matter of barometers. Theman I'd wanted to live with like a second "Suzanne de Sirmont" inDaudet's _Happiness_ had not only cut me to the quick but was rubbingsalt in the wound. He had said what he did with deliberate intent tohurt me, for it was only too obvious that he was tired of being on thedefensive. And it did hurt. It couldn't help hurting. For the man, after all, was my husband. He was the husband to whom I'd given up thebest part of my life, the two-legged basket into which I'd packed allmy eggs of allegiance. And now he was scrambling that preciouscollection for a cheap omelette of amorous adventure. He was myhusband, I kept reminding myself. But that didn't cover the entirecase. No husband whose heart is right stands holding another woman'sshoulder and tries to read her shoe-numbers through her ardentlyupturned eyes. It shows the wind is not blowing right in the homecircle. It shows a rent in the dyke, a flaw in the blade, a breach inthe fortress-wall of faith. For marriage, to the wife who is a motheras well, impresses me as rather like the spliced arrow of theEsquimos: it is cemented together with blood. It is a solemn matter. And for the sake of _mutter-schutz_, if for nothing else, it must bekept that way. 

There was a time, I suppose, when the thought of such a thing wouldhave taken my breath away, would have chilled me to the bone. But I'dbeen through my refining fires, in that respect, and you can't burnthe prairie over twice in the same season. I tried to tell myself itwas the setting, and not the essential fact, that seemed so odious. Idid my best to believe it wasn't so much that Duncan Argyll McKail hadstooped to make advances to this bandy-legged she-teacher whom I'd socharitably housed at Casa Grande since the beginning of the year--forI'd long since learned not to swallow the antique claim that of allterrestrial _carnivora_ only man and the lion are trulymonogamous--but more the fact it had been made such a back-stairsaffair with no solitary redeeming touch of dignity. 

Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, would have laughed it away, if I hadn't walkedin on them with their arms about each other, and the bandy-legged onebreathing her capitulating sighs into his ear. But there wasdesperation in the eyes of Miss Alsina Teeswater, and it was plain tosee that if my husband had been merely playing with fire it had becomea much more serious matter with the lady in the case. There was, infact, something almost dignifying in that strickenly defiant face ofhers. I was almost sorry for her when she turned and walkedwhite-lipped out of the room. What I resented most, as I stood facingmy husband, was his paraded casualness, his refusal to take a tragicsituation tragically. His attitude seemed to imply that we were aboutto have a difference over a small thing--over a small thing with browneyes. He could even stand inspecting me with a mildly amused glance, and I might have forgiven his mildness, I suppose, if it had beenwithout amusement, and that amusement in some way at my expense. Heeven managed to laugh as I stood there staring at him. It was neitheran honest nor a natural laugh. It merely gave me the feeling that hewas trying to entrench himself behind a raw mound of mirth, that anyshelter was welcome until the barrage was lifted. 

"And what do you intend doing about it?" I asked, more quietly than Ihad imagined possible. 

"What would you suggest?" he parried, as he began to feel in hispockets for his pipe. 

And I still had a sense, as I saw the barricaded look come into hisface, of entrenchments being frantically thrown up. I continued tostare at him as he found his pipe and proceeded to fill it. I evenwrung a ghostly satisfaction out of the discovery that his fingersweren't so steady as he might have wished them to be. 

"I suppose you're trying to make me feel like the Wicked Uncle edgingaway from the abandoned Babes in the Woods?" he finally demanded, asthough exasperated by my silence. He was delving for matches by thistime, and seemed disappointed that none was to be found in hispockets. I don't know why he should seem to recede from me, for hedidn't move an inch from where he stood with that defensively mockingsmile on his face. But abysmal gulfs of space seemed to blow in likesea-mists between him and me, desolating and lonely stretches ofemptiness which could never again be spanned by the tiny bridges ofhope. I felt alone, terribly alone, in a world over which the lastfire had swept and the last rains had fallen. My throat tightened andmy eyes smarted from the wave of self-pity which washed through mybody. It angered me, ridiculously, to think that I was going to breakdown at such a time. 

But the more I thought over it the more muddled I grew. There wassomething maddening in the memory that I was unable to act as myinstincts prompted me to act, that I couldn't, like the outraged wifeof screen and story, walk promptly out of the door and slam itepochally shut after me. But modern life never quite lives up to itsfiction. And we are never quite free, we women who have given ourhostages to fortune, to do as we wish. We have lives other than ourown to think about. 

"But it's all been so--so _dishonest_!" I cried out, stopping myselfin the middle of a gesture which might have seemed like wringing myhands. 

That, apparently, gave Dinky-Dunk something to get his teeth into. Theneutral look went out of his eye, to be replaced by a fortifying stareof enmity. 

"I don't know as it's any more dishonest than the long-distance brandof the same thing!"

I knew, at once, what he meant. He meant Peter. He meant poor oldPeter Ketley, whose weekly letter, year in and year out, came asregular as clockwork to Casa Grande. Those letters came to my sonDinkie, though it couldn't be denied they carried many a cheering wordand many a companionable message to Dinkie's mother. But it brought meup short, to think that my own husband would try to play cuttle-fishwith a clean-hearted and a clean-handed man like Peter. The wave thatwent through my body, on this occasion, was one of rage. I tried tosay something, but I couldn't. The lion of my anger had me down, bythis time, with his paw on my breast. The power of speech wassqueezed out of my carcass. I could only stare at my husband with adenuding and devastating stare of incredulity touched with disgust, ofabhorrence skirting dangerously close along the margins of hate. Andhe stared back, with morose and watchful defiance on his face. 

Heaven only knows how it would have ended, if that tableau hadn't gonesmash, with a sudden offstage clatter and thump and cry which remindedme there were more people in the world than Chaddie McKail and herphilandering old husband. For during that interregnum of parentalpreoccupation Dinkie and Poppsy had essayed to toboggan down the lowerhalf of the front-stairs in an empty drawer commandeered from mybedroom dresser. Their descent, apparently, had been about asprecipitate as that of their equally adventurous sire down the treadsof my respect, for they had landed in a heap on the hardwood floor ofthe hall and I found Dinkie with an abraded shin-bone and Poppsy witha cut lip. My Poppsy was more frightened at the sight of blood thanactually hurt by her fall, and Dinkie betrayed a not unnaturaltendency to enlarge on his injuries in extenuation of his offense. Butthat suddenly imposed demand for first-aid took my mind out of thedarker waters in which it had been wallowing, and by the time I hadcomforted my kiddies and completed my ministrations Dinky-Dunk hadquietly escaped from the house and my accusatory stares by clapping onhis hat and going out to the stables. .. . 

And that's the scene which keeps pacing back and forth between thebars of my brain like a jaguar in a circus-cage. That's the scene I'vebeen living over, for the last few days, thinking of all the morebrilliant things I might have said and the more expedient things Imight have done. And that's the scene which has been working likeyeast at the bottom of my sodden batter of contentment, making me feelthat I'd swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment couldn't findsome relief in expression. So after three long years and more ofsilence I'm turning back to this, the journal of one irresponsible oldChaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy and who has in some waymissed the pot of gold that they told her was to be found at therainbow's end. 

It seems incredible, as I look back, that more than three, long yearsshould slip away without the penning of one line in this, thesafety-valve of my soul. But the impulse to write rather slipped awayfrom me. It wasn't that there was so little to record, for life isalways life. But when it burns clearest it seems to have the trick ofconsuming its own smoke and leaving so very little ash. The crowdedeven tenor of existence goes on, with its tidal ups and downs, toolistlessly busy to demand expression. Then the shock of tempest comes, and it's only after we're driven out of them that we realize we'vebeen drifting so long in the doldrums of life. Then it comes home tous that there are the Dark Ages in the history of a woman exactly asthere were the Dark Ages in the history of Europe. Life goes on inthose Dark Ages, but it doesn't feel the call to articulate itself, toleave a record of its experiences. And that strikes me, as I sit hereand think of it, as about the deepest tragedy that can overtakeanything on this earth. Nothing, after all, is sadder than silence, the silence of dead civilizations and dead cities and dead souls. Andnothing is more costly. For beauty itself, in actual life, passesaway, but beauty lovingly recorded by mortal hands endures and goesdown to our children. And I stop writing, at that word of "children, "for miraculously, as I repeat it, I see it cut a window in theunlighted house of my heart. And that window is the bright littleGothic oriel which will always be golden and luminous with love andwill always send the last shadow scurrying away from the mustiestcorner of my tower of life. I have my Dinkie and my Poppsy, andnothing can take them away from me. It's on them that I pin my hope. 

_Sunday the Seventeenth_

I've been thinking a great deal over what's happened this last week orso. And I've been trying to reorganize my life, the same as you put ahouse to rights after a funeral. But it wasn't a well-ordered funeral, in this case, and I was denied even the tempered satisfaction of thebereaved after the finality of a smoothly conducted burial. Fornothing has been settled. It's merely that Time has been trying toencyst what it can not absorb. I felt, for a day or two, that I hadnothing much to live for. I felt like a feather-weight who'd faced aknock-out. I saw Pride go to the mat, and take the count, and if I wasdazed, for a while, I suppose it was mostly convalescence from shock. Then I tightened my belt, and reminded myself that it wasn't the firstwallop Fate had given me, and remembered that in this life you have toadjust yourself to your environment or be eliminated from the game. And life, I suppose, has tamed me, as a man who once loved me said itwould do. The older I get the more tolerant I try to be, and the moreI know of this world the more I realize that Right is seldom all onone side and Wrong on the other. It's a matter of give and take, thisproblem of traveling in double-harness. I can even smile a little, asI remember that college day in my teens when Matilda-Anne and Katrinaand Fanny-Rain-in-the-Face and myself solemnly discussed man and hismake-up, over a three-pound box of Maillard's, and resolutely agreedthat we would surrender our hearts to no suitor over twenty-six andmarry no male who'd ever loved another woman--not, at least, unlessthe situation had become compensatingly romanticized by the death ofany such lady preceding us in our loved one's favor. Little we knew ofmen and ourselves and the humiliations with which life breaks thespirit of arrogant youth! For even now, knowing what I know, I've beendoing my best to cooper together a case for my unstable oldDinky-Dunk. I've been trying to keep the thought of poor dead LadyAlicia out of my head. I've been wondering if there's any truth inwhat Dinky-Dunk said, a few weeks ago, about a mere father being likethe male of the warrior-spider whom the female of the species standsready to dine upon, once she's assured of her progeny. 

I suppose I _have_ given most of my time and attention to my children. And it's as perilous, I suppose, to give your heart to a man and thentake it even partly away again as it is to give a trellis to arose-bush and then expect it to stand alone. My husband, too, has beenrestless and dissatisfied with prairie life during the last year orso, has been rocking in his own doldrums of inertia where the sight ofeven the humblest ship--and the Wandering Sail in this case alwaysseemed to me as soft and shapeless as a boned squab-pigeon!--couldpromptly elicit an answering signal. 

But I strike a snag there, for Alsina has not been so boneless as Ianticipated. There was an unlooked-for intensity in her eyes and amild sort of tragedy in her voice when she came and told me that shewas going to another school in the Knee-Hill country and asked if Icould have her taken in to Buckhorn the next morning. Some one, ofcourse, had to go. There was one too many in this prairie home thatmust always remain so like an island dotting the lonely wastes of alonely sea. And triangles, oddly enough, seem to flourish best in citysquares. But much as I wanted to talk to Alsina, I was compelled torespect her reserve. I even told her that Dinkie would miss her agreat deal. She replied, with a choke in her voice, that he was awonderful child. That, of course, was music to the ears of his mother, and my respect for the tremulous Miss Teeswater went up at least tendegrees. But when she added, without meeting my eye, that she wasreally fond of the boy, I couldn't escape the impression that she wasedging out on very thin ice. It was, I think, only the silent miseryin her half-averted face which kept me from inquiring if she hadn'trather made it a family affair. But that, second thought promptly toldme, would seem too much like striking the fallen. And we both seemedto feel, thereafter, that silence was best. 

Practically nothing passed between us, in fact, until we reached thestation. I could see that she was dreading the ordeal of sayinggood-by. That unnamed sixth sense peculiar to cab-drivers and waitersand married women told me that every moment on the bald littleplatform was being a torture to her. As the big engine came lumberingup to a standstill she gave me one quick and searching look. It was alook I shall never forget. For, in it was a question and somethingmore than a question. An unworded appeal was there, and also anunworded protest. It got past my outposts of reason, in some way. Itcame to me in my bitterness like the smell of lilacs into a sick-room. I couldn't be cruel to that poor crushed outcast who had sufferedquite as much from the whole ignoble affair as I had suffered. Isuddenly held out my hand to her, and she took it, with that hungryquestioning look still on her face. 

"It's all right, " I started to say. But her head suddenly went downbetween her hunched-up shoulders. Her body began to shake and tearsgushed from her eyes. I had to help her to the car steps. 

"It was all my fault, " she said in a strangled voice, between herhelpless little sobs. 

It was brave of her, of course, and she meant it for the best. But Iwish she hadn't said it. Instead of making everything easier for me, as she intended, she only made it harder. She left me disturbinglyconscious of ghostly heroisms which transposed what I had tried toregard as essentially ignoble into some higher and purer key. And shemade it harder for me to look at my husband, when I got home, with acalm and collected eye. I felt suspiciously like Lady Macbeth afterthe second murder. I felt that we were fellow-sharers of a guiltysecret it would never do to drag too often into the light ofevery-day life. 

But it will no more stay under cover, I find, than a dab-chick willstay under water. It bobs up in the most unexpected places, as it didlast night, when Dinkie publicly proclaimed that he was going to marryhis Mummy when he got big. 

"It would be well, my son, not to repeat the mistakes of your father!"observed Dinky-Dunk. And having said it, he relighted his quarantiningpipe and refused to meet my eye. But it didn't take a surgicaloperation to get what he meant into my head. It hurt, in more waysthan one, for it struck me as suspiciously like a stone embodied in asnowball--and even our offspring recognized this as no fair manner offighting. 

"Then it impresses you as a mistake?" I demanded, seeing red, for thecoyote in me, I'm afraid, will never entirely become house-dog. 

"Isn't that the way you regard it?" he asked, inspecting me with anon-committal eye. 

I had to bite my lip, to keep from flinging out at him the things thatwere huddled back in my heart. But it was no time for making big warmedicine. So I got the lid on, and held it there. 

"My dear Dinky-Dunk, " I said with an effort at a gesture of weariness, "I've long since learned that life can't be made clean, like a cat'sbody, by the use of the tongue alone!"

Dinky-Dunk did not look at me. Instead, he turned to the boy who waswatching that scene with a small frown of perplexity on his none tooapproving face. 

"You go up to the nursery, " commanded my husband, with more curtnessthan usual. 

But before Dinkie went he slowly crossed the room and kissed me. Hedid so with a quiet resoluteness which was not without its tacit touchof challenge. 

"You may feel that way about the use of the tongue, " said my husbandas soon as we were alone, "but I'm going to unload a few things I'vebeen keeping under cover. "

He waited for me to say something. But I preferred remaining silent. 

"Of course, " he floundered on, "I don't want to stop you martyrizingyourself in making a mountain out of a mole-hill. But I'm getting atrifle tired of this holier-than-thou attitude. And----"

"And?" I prompted, when he came to a stop and sat pushing up hisbrindled front-hair until it made me think of the Corean lion on thelibrary mantel, the lion in pottery which we invariably spoke of asthe Dog of Fo. My wintry smile at that resemblance seemed toexasperate him. 

"What were you going to say?" I quietly inquired. 

"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed, with quite unexpected vigor. 

"I hope the children are out of hearing, " I reminded him, solemn-eyed. 

"Yes, the children!" he cried, catching at the word exactly as adrowning man catches at a lifebelt. "The children! That's just theroot of the whole intolerable situation. This hasn't been a home forthe last three or four years; it's been nothing but a nursery. Andabout all I've been is a retriever for a _crèche_, a clod-hopper totiptoe about the sacred circle and see to it there's enough flannel tocover their backs and enough food to put into their stomachs. I'm anaccident, of course, an intruder to be faced with fortitude and bornewith patience. "

"This sounds quite disturbing, " I interrupted. "It almost leaves mesuspicious that you are about to emulate the rabbit and devour youryoung. "

Dinky-Dunk fixed me with an accusatory finger. 

"And the fact that you can get humor out of it shows me just how farit has gone, " he cried with a bitterness which quickly enough made mesober again. "And I could stand being deliberately shut out of yourlife, and shut out of their lives as far as you can manage it, but Ican't see that it's doing either them or you any particular good. "

"But I am responsible for the way in which those children grow up, " Isaid, quite innocent of the _double entendre_ which brought a darkflush to my husband's none too happy face. 

"And I suppose I'm not to contaminate them?" he demanded. 

"Haven't you done enough along that line?" I asked. 

He swung about, at that, with something dangerously like hate on hisface. 

"Whose children are they?" he challenged. 

"You are their father, " I quietly acknowledged. It rather startled meto find Dinky-Dunk regarding himself as a fur coat and my offspring asmoth-eggs which I had laid deep in the pelt of his life, where we wereslowly but surely eating the glory out of that garment and leaving itas bald as a prairie dog's belly. 

"Well, you give very little evidence of it!"

"You can't expect me to turn a cart-wheel, surely, every time Iremember it?" was my none too gracious inquiry. Then I sat down. "Butwhat is it you want me to do?" I asked, as I sat studying his face, and I felt sorriest for him because he felt sorry for himself. 

"That's exactly the point, " he averred. "There doesn't seem anythingto do. But this can't go on forever. "

"No, " I acknowledged. "It seems too much like history repeatingitself. "

His head went down, at that, and it was quite a long time before helooked up at me again. 

"I don't suppose you can see it from my side of the fence?" he askedwith a disturbing new note of humility in his voice. 

"Not when you force me to stay on the fence, " I told him. He seemed torealize, as he sat there slowly moving his head up and down, that nofurther advance was to be made along that line. So he took a deepbreath and sat up. 

"Something will have to be done about getting a new teacher for thatschool, " he said with an appositeness which was only too painfullyapparent. 

"I've already spoken to two of the trustees, " I told him. "They'regetting a teacher from the Peg. It's to be a man this time. "

Instead of meeting my eye, he merely remarked: "That'll be better forthe boy!"

"In what way?" I inquired. 

"Because I don't think too much petticoat is good for any boy, "responded my lord and master. 

"Big or little!" I couldn't help amending, in spite of all my goodintentions. 

Dinky-Dunk ignored the thrust, though it plainly took an effort. 

"There are times when even kindness can be a sort of cruelty, " hepatiently and somewhat platitudinously pursued. 

"Then I wish somebody would ill-treat me along that line, " Iinterjected. And this time he smiled, though it was only for amoment. 

"Supposing we stick to the children, " he suggested. 

"Of course, " I agreed. "And since you've brought the matter up I can'thelp telling you that I always felt that my love for my children isthe one redeeming thing in my life. "

"Thanks, " said my husband, with a wince. 

"Please don't misunderstand me. I'm merely trying to say that amother's love for her children has to be one of the strongest andholiest things in this hard old world of ours. And it seems onlynatural to me that a woman should consider her children first, andplan for them, and make sacrifices for them, and fight for them if shehas to. "

"It's so natural, in fact, " remarked Dinky-Dunk, "that it has beenobserved in even the Bengal tigress. "

"It is my turn to thank you, " I acknowledged, after giving hisstatement a moment or two of thought. 

"But we're getting away from the point again, " proclaimed my husband. "I've been trying to tell you that children are like rabbits: It'sonly fit and proper they should be cared for, but they can't thrive, and they can't even live, if they're handled too much. "

"I haven't observed any alarming absence of health in my children, " Ifound the courage to say. But a tightness gathered about my heart, forI could sniff what was coming. 

"They may be all right, as far as that goes, " persisted their lordlyparent. "But what I say is, too much cuddling and mollycoddling isn'tgood for that boy of yours, or anybody else's boy. " And he proceededto explain that my Dinkie was an ordinary, every-day, normal childand should be accepted and treated as such or we'd have atemperamental little bounder on our hands. 

I knew that my boy wasn't abnormal. But I knew, on the other hand, that he was an exceptionally impressionable and sensitive child. And Icouldn't be sorry for that, for if there's anything I abhor in thisworld it's torpor. And whatever he may have been, nothing could shakeme in my firm conviction that a child's own mother is the best personto watch over his growth and shape his character. 

"But what is all this leading up to?" I asked, steeling myself for theunwelcome. 

"Simply to what I've already told you on several occasions, " was myhusband's answer. "That it's about time this boy of ours was bundledoff to a boarding-school. "

I sat back, trying to picture my home and my life without Dinkie. Butit was unbearable. It was unthinkable. 

"I shall never agree to that, " I quietly retorted. 

"Why?" asked my husband, with a note of triumph which I resented. 

"For one thing, because he is still a child, because he is too young, "I contended, knowing that I could never agree with Dinky-Dunk in histhoroughly English ideas of education even while I remembered how hehad once said that the greatness of England depended on herpublic-schools, such as Harrow and Eton and Rugby and Winchester, andthat she had been the best colonizer in the world because her boys hadbeen taken young and taught not to overvalue home ties, had been mademanlier by getting off with their own kind instead of remaininghitched to an apron-string. 

"And you prefer keeping him stuck out here on the prairie?" demandedDinky-Dunk. 

"The prairie has been good enough for his parents, this last seven oreight years, " I contended. 

"It hasn't been good enough for me, " my husband cried out with quiteunlooked-for passion. "And I've about had my fill of it!"

"Where would you prefer going?" I asked, trying to speak as quietly asI could. 

"That's something I'm going to find out as soon as the chance comes, "he retorted with a slow and embittered emphasis which didn't add anyto my peace of mind. 

"Then why cross our bridges, " I suggested, "until we come to them?"

"But you're not looking for bridges, " he challenged. "You don't wantto see anything beyond living like Doukhobours out here on the edge ofNowhere and remembering that you've got your precious offspring hereunder your wing and wondering how many bushels of Number-One-Hard itwill take to buy your Dinkie a riding pinto!"

"Aren't you rather tired to-night?" I asked with all the patience Icould command. 

"Yes, and I'm talking about the thing that makes me tired. For youknow as well as I do that you've made that boy of yours a sort ofanesthetic. You put him on like a nose-cap, and forget the world. He'sabout all you remember to think about. Why, when you look at theclock, nowadays, it isn't ten minutes to twelve. It's always Dinkieminutes to Dink. When you read a book you're only reading about whatyour Dinkie might have done or what your Dinkie is some day to write. When you picture the Prime Minister it's merely your Dinkie grown big, laying down the law to a House of Parliament made up of other Dinkies, rows and rows of 'em. When the sun shines you're wondering whetherit's warm enough for your Dinkie to walk in, and when the snow beginsto melt you're wondering whether it's soft enough for the belovedDinkie to mold into snowballs. When you see a girl you at once getbusy speculating over whether or not she'll ever be beautiful enoughfor your Dinkie, and when one of the Crowned Heads of Europe announcesthe alliance of its youngest princess you fall to pondering if Dinkiewouldn't have made her a better husband. And when the flowers come outin your window-box you wonder if they're fair enough to bloom besideyour Dinkie. I don't suppose I ever made a haystack that you didn'twonder whether it wasn't going to be a grand place for Dinkie to slidedown. And when Dinkie draws a goggle-eyed man on his scribbler you seeMichael Angelo totter and Titian turn in his grave. And when Dinkiewrites a composition of thirty crooked lines on the landing of Hengistyou feel that fate did Hume a mean trick in letting him pass awaybefore inspecting that final word in historical record. And heaven'sjust a row of Dinkies with little gold harps tucked under their wings. And you think you're breathing air, but all you're breathing isDinkies, millions and millions of etherealized Dinkies. And when youread about the famine in China you inevitably and adroitly hitch thedeath of seven thousand Chinks in Yangchow on to the interests ofyour immortal offspring. And I suppose Rome really came into being forthe one ultimate end that an immortal young Dinkie might possess hisfull degree of Dinkiness and the glory that was Greece must have beenmerely the tom-toms tuning up for the finished dance of our Dinkie'sgrandeur. Day and night, it's Dinkie, just Dinkie!"

I waited until he was through. I waited, heavy of heart, until hisfoolish fires of revolt had burned themselves out. And it didn't seemto add to his satisfaction to find that I could inspect him with aquiet and slightly commiserative eye. 

"You are accusing me, " I finally told him, "of something I'm proud of. And I'm afraid I'll always be guilty of caring for my own son. "

He turned on me with a sort of heavy triumph. 

"Well, it's something that you'll jolly well pay the piper for, someday, " he announced. 

"What do you mean by that?" I demanded. 

"I mean that nothing much is ever gained by letting the maternalinstinct run over. And that's exactly what you're doing. You're tryingto tie Dinkie to your side, when you can no more tie him up than youcan tie up a sunbeam. You could keep him close enough to you, ofcourse, when he was small. But he's bound to grow away from you as hegets bigger, just as I grew away from my mother and you once grew awayfrom yours. It's a natural law, and there's no use crocking your kneeson it. The boy's got his own life to live, and you can't live it forhim. It won't be long, now, before you begin to notice those quietwithdrawals, those slippings-back into his own shell of self-interest. And unless you realize what it means, it's going to hurt. And unlessyou reckon on that in the way you order your life you're not onlygoing to be a very lonely old lady but you're going to bump into a bighole where you thought the going was smoothest!"

I sat thinking this over, with a ton of lead where my heart shouldhave been. 

"I've already bumped into a big hole where I thought the going wassmoothest, " I finally observed. 

My husband looked at me and then looked away again. 

"I was hoping we could fill that up and forget it, " he ventured in avalorously timid tone which made it hard, for reasons I couldn't quitefathom, to keep my throat from tightening. But I sat there, shaking myhead from side to side. 

"I've got to love something, " I found myself protesting. "And thechildren seem all that is left. "

"How about me?" asked my husband, with his acidulated and slightlyone-sided smile. 

"You've changed, Dinky-Dunk, " was all I could say. 

"But some day, " he contended, "you may wake up to the fact that I'mstill a human being. "

"I've wakened up to the fact that you're a different sort of humanbeing than I had thought. "

"Oh, we're all very much alike, once you get our number, " asserted myhusband. 

"You mean men are, " I amended. 

"I mean that if men can't get a little warmth and color and sympathyin the home-circle they're going to edge about until they find asubstitute for it, no matter how shoddy it may be, " contendedDinky-Dunk. 

"But isn't that a hard and bitter way of writing life down to one'sown level?" I asked, trying to swallow the choke that wouldn't staydown in my throat. 

"Well, I can't see that we get much ahead by trying to sentimentalizethe situation, " he said, with a gesture that seemed one offrustration. 

We sat staring at each other, and again I had the feeling of abysmalgulfs of space intervening between us. 

"Is that all you can say about it?" I asked, with a foolish littlegulp I couldn't control. 

"Isn't it enough?" demanded Dinky-Dunk. And I knew that nothing was tobe gained, that night, by the foolish and futile clash of words. 

_Tuesday the Twenty-Third_

I've been doing a good deal of thinking over what Dinky-Dunk said. Ihave been trying to see things from his standpoint. By a sort ofmental ju-jutsu I've even been trying to justify what I can't quiteunderstand in him. But it's no use. There's one bald, hard fact Ican't escape, no matter how I dig my old ostrich-beak of instinctunder the sands of self-deception. There's one cold-blooded truth thatwill have to be faced. _My husband is no longer in love with me. _Whatever else may have happened, I have lost my heart-hold on DuncanArgyll McKail. I am still his wife, in the eyes of the law, and themother of his children. We still live together, and, from force ofhabit, if from nothing else, go through the familiar old rites ofdaily communion. He sits across the table from me when I eat, andtalks casually enough of the trivially momentous problems of theminute, or he reads in his slippers before the fire while I do mysewing within a spool-toss of him. But a row of invisible assegaisstand leveled between his heart and mine. A slow glacier ofgreen-iced indifferency shoulders in between us; and gone forever isthe wild-flower aroma of youth, the singing spirit of April, themysterious light that touched our world with wonder. He is merely aman, drawing on to middle age, and I am a woman, no longer young. Gonenow are the spring floods that once swept us together. Gone now is theflame of adoration that burned clean our altar of daily intercourseand left us blind to the weaknesses we were too happy to remember. Forthere was a time when we loved each other. I know that as well asDuncan does. But it died away, that ghostly flame. It went out like aneglected fire. And blowing on dead ashes can never revive theold-time glow. 

"So they were married and lived happy ever afterward!" That is thefamiliar ending to the fairy-tales I read over and over again to myDinkie and Poppsy. But they are fairy-tales. For who lives happy everafterward? First love chloroforms us, for a time, and we try to hug toour bosoms the illusion that Heaven itself is only a sort of endlesshoneymoon presided over by Lohengrin marches. But the anesthetic wearsaway and we find that life isn't a bed of roses but a rough field thatrewards us as we till it, with here and there the cornflower ofhappiness laughing unexpectedly up at us out of our sober acres ofsober wheat. And often enough we don't know happiness when we see it. We assuredly find it least where we look for it most. I can't evenunderstand why we're equipped with such a hunger for it. But I findmyself trending more and more to that cynic philosophy which defineshappiness as the absence of pain. The absence of pain--that is a lotto ask for, in this life!

I wonder if Dinky-Dunk is right in his implication that I am gettinghard? There are times, I know, when I grate on him, when he wouldprobably give anything to get away from me. Yet here we are, linkedtogether like two convicts. And I don't believe I'm as hard as myhusband accuses me of being. However macadamized they may have madelife for me, there's at least one soft spot in my heart, one gardenunder the walls of granite. And that's the spot which my two childrenfill, which my children keep green, which my children keep holy. It'sthem I think of, when I think of the future--when I should at least bethinking a little of my grammar and remembering that the verb "to be"takes the nominative, just as discontented husbands seem to take theinitiative! That's why I can't quite find the courage to ask forfreedom. I have seen enough of life to know what the smash-up of afamily means to its toddlers. And I want my children to have a chance. They can't have that chance without at least two things. One is theguardianship of home life, and the other is that curse of modern timesknown as money. We haven't prospered as we had hoped to, but heavenknows I've kept an eagle eye on that savings-account of mine, in thatabsurdly new and resplendent red-brick bank in Buckhorn. PatientlyI've fed it with my butter and egg money, joyfully I've seen it growwith my meager Nitrate dividends, and grimly I've made it bigger withevery loose dollar I could lay my hands on. There's no heroism in mygoing without things I may have thought I needed, just as there can belittle nobility in my sticking to a husband who no longer loves me. For it's not Chaddie McKail who counts now, but her chicks. And I'llhave to look for my reward through them, for I'm like Romanes' ratnow, too big to get into the bottle of cream, but wary enough to knowI can dine from a tail still small enough for insertion. I'm merely asubmerged prairie-hen with the best part of her life behind her. 

But it bothers me, what Duncan says about my always thinking of littleDinkie first. And I'm afraid I do, though it seems neither right norfair. I suppose it's because he was my first-born--and having comefirst in my life he must come first in my thoughts. I was made to lovesomebody--and my husband doesn't seem to want me to love him. So hehas driven me to centering my thoughts on the child. I've got to havesomething to warm up to. And any love I may lavish on thisprairie-chick of mine, who has to face life with the lack of so manythings, will not only be a help to the boy, but will be a help to me, the part of Me that I'm sometimes so terribly afraid of. 

Yet I can't help wondering if Duncan has any excuses for claiming thatit's personal selfishness which prompts me to keep my boy close to myside. And am I harming him, without knowing it, in keeping him hereunder my wing? Schools are all right, in a way, but surely a goodmother can do as much in the molding of a boy's mind as aboarding-school with a file of Ph. D. 's on its staff. But am I a goodmother? And should I trust myself, in a matter like this, to my ownfeelings? Men, in so many things, are better judges than women. Yet ithas just occurred to me that all men do not think alike. I've beensitting back and wondering what kindly old Peter would say about it. And I've decided to write Peter and ask what he advises. He'll tellthe truth, I know, for Peter is as honest as the day is long. .. . 

I've just been up to make sure the children were properly covered inbed. And it disturbed me a little to find that without even thinkingabout it I went to Dinkie first. It seemed like accidentalcorroboration of all that Duncan has been saying. But I stood studyinghim as he lay there asleep. It frightened me a little, to find him sobig. If it's true, as Duncan threatens, that time will tend to turnhim away from me, it's something that I'm going to fight tooth andnail. And I've seen no sign of it, as yet. With every month and everyyear that's added to his age he grows more companionable, more able tobridge the chasm between two human souls. We have more interests incommon, more things to talk about. And day by day Dinkie is reachingup to my clumsily mature way of looking at life. He can come to mewith his problems, knowing I'll always give him a hearing, just as heused to come to me with his baby cuts and bruises, knowing they wouldbe duly kissed and cared for. Yet some day, I have just remembered, he may have problems that can't be brought to me. But that day, pleaseGod, I shall defer as long as possible. Already we have our own littlesecrets and private compacts and understandings. I don't want my boyto be a mollycoddle. But I want him to have his chance in the world. Iwant him to be somebody. I can't reconcile myself to the thought ofhim growing up to wear moose-mittens and shoe-packs and stretchingbarb-wire in blue-jeans and riding a tractor across a prairieback-township. I refuse to picture him getting bent and gray wringinga livelihood out of an over-cropped ranch fourteen miles away from apost-office and a world away from the things that make life most worthliving. If he were an ordinary boy, I might be led to thinkdifferently. But my Dinkie is not an ordinary boy. There's a spark ofthe unusual, of the exceptional, in that laddie. And I intend to fanthat spark, whatever the cost may be, until it breaks out intogenius. 

_Sunday the Twenty-Eighth_

I've had scant time for introspection during the last five days, forStruthers has been in bed with lumbago, and the weight of thehousework reverted to me. But Whinstane Sandy brought his preciousbottle of Universal Ointment in from the bunk-house, and while thatfiery mixture warmed her lame back, the thought of its origin probablywarmed her lonely heart. I have suddenly wakened up to the fact thatStruthers is getting on a bit. She is still the same efficient andself-obliterating mainstay of the kitchen that she ever was, but shegrows more "sot" in her ways, more averse to any change in her dailyroutine, and more despairing of ever finally and completely capturingthat canny old Scotsman whom we still so affectionately designate asWhinnie, in short for Whinstane Sandy. Whinnie, I'm afraid, stillnurses the fixed idea that everything in petticoats and as yetunwedded is after him. And it is only by walking with the utmostcircumspection that he escapes their wiles and by maintaining anunbroken front withstands their unseemly advances. 

The new school-teacher has arrived, and is to live with us here atCasa Grande. I have my reasons for this. In the first place, it willbe a help to Dinkie in his studies. In the second place, it means thatthe teacher can pack my boy back and forth to school, in bad weather, and next month when Poppsy joins the ranks of the learners, can keep amore personal eye on that little tot's movements. And in the thirdplace the mere presence of another male at Casa Grande seems to dilutethe acids of home life. 

Gershom Binks is the name of this new teacher, and I have just learnedthat in the original Hebrew "Gershom" not inappropriately means "astranger there. " He is a sophomore (a most excellent word, that, whenyou come to inquire into its etymology!) from the University ofMinnesota and is compelled to teach the young idea, for a time, toaccumulate sufficient funds to complete his course, which he wants todo at Ann Arbor. And Gershom is a very tall and very thin and veryshort-sighted young man, with an Adam's apple that works up and downwith a two-inch plunge over the edge of his collar when hetalks--which he does somewhat extensively. He wears glasses with bigbulging lenses, glasses which tend to hide a pair of timid andbrown-October-aleish eyes with real kindliness in them. He looksill-nourished, but I can detect nothing radically wrong with hisappetite. It's merely that, like Cassius, he thinks too much. And I'mgoing to fatten that boy up a bit, before the year is out, or know thereason why. He may be a trifle self-conscious and awkward, but he'salso amazingly clean of both body and mind, and it will be nohardship, I know, to have him under our roof. And for all his devotionto Science, he reads his Bible every night--which is more than ChaddieMcKail does! He rather took the wind out of my sails by demanding, thefirst morning at breakfast, if I knew that one half-ounce of the webof the spider--the arachnid of the order _Araneida_, he explained--ifstretched out in a straight line would reach from the city of Chicagoto the city of Paris. I told him that this was a most wonderful and amost interesting piece of information and hoped that some day we couldverify it by actual test. Yet when I inquired whether he meant merelythe environs of the city of Paris, or the very heart of the city suchas the Place de l'Opéra, he studied me with the meditative eye withwhich Huxley must have once studied beetles. 

Dinky-Dunk, I notice, is as restive as a bull-moose in black-flyseason. He's doing his work on the land, as about every ranch-ownerhas to, whether he's happily married or not, but he's doing it withoutany undue impression of its epical importance. I heard him observe, yesterday, that if he could only get his hands on enough ready moneyhe'd like to swing into land business in a live center like Calgary. He has a friend there, apparently, who has just made a clean-up incity real estate and bought his wife a Detroit Electric and built ahome for himself that cost forty thousand dollars. I remindedDinky-Dunk, when he had finished, that we really must have a newstraining-mesh in the milk-separator. He merely looked at me with asour and morose eye as he got up and went out to his team. 

Surely these men-folks are a dissatisfied lot! Gershom to-nightcomplained that his own name of "Gershom Binks" impressed him as aboutthe ugliest name that was ever hitched on to a scholar and agentlemen. And later on, after I'd opened my piano and tried toconsole myself with a tu'penny draught of Grieg, he inspected theinstrument and informed me that it was really evolved from thesix-stringed harps of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, which in the fifthdynasty was made with a greatly enlarged base, thus giving therudimentary beginning of a soundboard. 

I am learning a lot from Gershom! And so are my kiddies, for thatmatter. I begin, in fact, to feel like royalty with a private tutor, for every night now Dinkie and Poppsy and Gershom sit about theliving-room table and drink of the founts of wisdom. But we have ateacher here who loves to teach. And he is infinitely patient and kindwith my little toddlers. Dinkie already asks him questions withoutnumber, while Poppsy gratefully but decorously vamps him with herinfantine gazes. Then Gershom--Heaven bless his scholastic oldhigh-browed solemnity--has just assured me that Dinkie betrays manyevidences of an exceptionally bright mind. 

_Friday the Second_

My husband yesterday accused me of getting moss-backed. He had beenharping on the city string again and asked me if I intended to liveand die a withered beauty on a back-trail ranch. 

That "withered beauty" hurt, though I did my best to ignore it, forthe time at least. And Dinky-Dunk went on to say that it struck him asone of life's little ironies that _I_ should want to stick to the sortof life we were leading, remembering what I'd come from. 

"Dinky-Dunk, " I told him, "it's terribly hard to explain exactly how Ifeel about it all. I suppose I could never make you see it as I seeit. But it's a feeling like loyalty, loyalty to the land that's givenus what we have. And it's also a feeling of disliking to see one oldrule repeating itself: what has once been a crusade becoming merely abusiness. To turn and leave our land now, it seems to me, would makeus too much like those soulless soil-robbers you used to rail at, likethose squatters who've merely squeezed out what they could and havegone on, like those land-miners who take all they can get and standready to put nothing back. Why, if we were all like that, we'd have nocountry here. We'd be a wilderness, a Barren Grounds that went fromthe Border up to the Circle. But there's something bigger than thatabout it all. I love the prairie. Just why it is, I don't know. It'stoo fundamental to be fashioned into words, and I never realized howdeep it was until I went back to the city that time. One can just sayit, and let it go at that: _I love the prairie. _ It isn't merely itsbigness, just as it isn't altogether its freedom and its openness. Perhaps it's because it keeps its spirit of the adventurous. I love itthe same as my children love _The Arabian Nights_ and _The SwissFamily Robinson_. I thought it was mostly cant, once, that cry aboutbeing next to nature, but the more I know about nature the more I feelwith Pope that naught but man is vile, to speak as impersonally, mydear Diddums, as the occasion will permit. I'm afraid I'm like thatchickadee that flew into the bunk-house and Whinnie caught and put ina box-cage for Dinkie. I nearly die at the thought of being cooped up. I want clean air and open space about me. "

"I never dreamed you'd been Indianized to that extent, " murmured myhusband. 

"Being Indianized, " I proceeded, "seems to carry the inference of alsobeing barbarized. But it isn't quite that, Dinky-Dunk, for there'ssomething almost spiritually satisfying about this prairie life ifyou've only got the eyes to see it. I think that's because the prairiealways seems so majestically beautiful to me. I can see your lip curlagain, but I know I'm right. When I throw open my windows of a morningand see that placid old never-ending plain under its great wash oflight something lifts up in my breast, like a bird, and no matter howa mere man has been doing his best to make me miserable that somethingstands up on the tip of my heart and does its darnedest to sing. Itimpresses me as life on such a sane and gigantic scale that I want tobe an actual part of it, that I positively ache to have a share in itsimmensities. It seems so fruitful and prodigal and generous andpatient. It's so open-handed in the way it produces and gives andreturns our love. And there's a completeness about it that makes mefeel it can't possibly be wrong. "

"The Eskimo, I suppose, feels very much the same in his little iglooof ice with a pot of whale-blubber at his elbow, " observed myhusband. 

"You're a brute, my dear Diddums, and more casually cruel than aBaffin-land cannibal, " I retorted. "But we'll let it pass. For I'mtalking about something that's too fundamental to be upset by a bittertongue. There was a time, I know, when I used to fret about the finerthings I thought I was losing out of life, about the little hand-madefripperies people have been forced to conjure up and carpentertogether to console them for having to live in human beehives made ofsteel and concrete. But I'm beginning to find out that joy isn't amatter of geography and companionship isn't a matter of over-crowdedsubways. And the strap-hangers and the train-catchers and thefirst-nighters can have what they've got. I don't seem to envy themthe way I used to. I don't need a Louvre when I've got the NorthernLights to look at. And I can get along without an Æolian Hall whenI've got a little music in my own heart--for it's only what you've gotthere, after all, that really counts in this world!"

"All of which means, " concluded my husband, "that you are mostunmistakably growing old!"

"You have already, " I retorted, "referred to me as a witheredbeauty. "

Dinky-Dunk studied me long and intently. I even felt myself turningpink under that prolonged stare of appraisal. 

"You are still easy to look at, " he over-slangily and over-generouslyadmitted. "But I do regret that you aren't a little easier to livewith!"

I could force a little laugh, at that, but I couldn't quite keep atremor out of my voice when I spoke again. 

"I'm sorry you see only my bad side, Dinky-Dunk. But it's kindnessthat seems to bring everything that is best out of us women. We'reterribly like sliced pineapple in that respect: give us just asprinkling of sugar, and out come all the juices!"

It was Dinky-Dunk's color that deepened a little as he turned andknocked out his pipe. 

"That's a Chaddie McKail argument, " he merely observed as he stood up. "And a Chaddie McKail argument impresses me as suspiciously like Swisscheese: it doesn't seem to be genuine unless you can find plenty ofholes in it. "

I did my best to smile at his humor. 

"But this isn't an argument, " I quietly corrected. "I'd look at itmore in the nature of an ultimatum. "

That brought him up short, as I had intended it to do. He stoodworrying over it as Bobs and Scotty worry over a bone. 

"I'm afraid, " he finally intoned, "I've been repeatedly doing you thegreat injustice of underestimating your intelligence!"

"That, " I told him, "is a point where I find silence imposed uponme. "

He didn't speak until he got to the door. 

"Well, I'm glad we've cleared the air a bit anyway, " he said with agrim look about his Holbein Astronomer old mouth as he went out. 

But we haven't cleared the air. And it disturbs me more than I can sayto find that I have reservations from my husband. It bewilders me tosee that I can't be perfectly candid with him. But there are certaindeeper feelings that I can no longer uncover in his presence. Something holds me back from explaining to him that this fixed dreadof mine for all cities is largely based on my loss of little Pee-Wee. For if I hadn't gone to New York that time, to Josie Langdon'swedding, I might never have lost my boy. They did the best theycould, I suppose, before their telegrams brought me back, but theydidn't seem to understand the danger. And little did I dream, beforethe Donnelly butler handed me that first startling message just as wewere climbing into the motor to go down to the Rochambeau to meetChinkie and Tavvy, that within a week I was to sit and watch thecruelest thing that can happen in this world. I was to see a smallchild die. I was to watch my own Pee-Wee pass quietly away. 

I have often wondered, since, why I never shed a tear during all thoseterrible three days. I couldn't, in some way, though the nurse herselfwas crying, and poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing togethernext to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, on the other side of thebed, was racking his shoulders with smothered sobs as he held thelittle white hand in his and the warmth went forever out of the littlefingers where his foolish big hand was trying to hold back the lifethat couldn't be kept there. The old are ready to die, or can makethemselves ready. They have run their race and had their turn atliving. But it seems cruel hard to see a little tot, with eagernessstill in his heart, taken away, taken away with the wonder of thingsstill in his eyes. It stuns you. It makes you rebel. It leaves a scarthat Time itself can never completely heal. 

Yet through it all I can still hear the voice of valorous old Whinnieas he patted my shoulder and smiled with the brine still in the seamsof his furrowed old face. "We'll thole through, lassie; we'll tholethrough!" he said over and over again. Yes; we'll thole through. Andthis is only the uncovering of old wounds. And one must keep one'sheart and one's house in order, for with us we still have the living. 

But Dinky-Dunk can't completely understand, I'm afraid, this morbidhankering of mine to keep my family about me, to have the two chicksthat are left to me close under my wing. And never once, since Pee-Weewent, have I actually punished either of my children. It may be wrong, but I can't help it. I don't want memories of violence to be leftcorroding and rankling in my mind. And I'd hate to see any child ofmine cringe, like an ill-treated dog, at every lift of the hand. Thereare better ways of controlling them, I begin to feel, than throughfear. Their father, I know, will never agree with me on this matter. He will always insist on mastery, open and undisputed mastery, in hisown house. He is the head of this Clan McKail, the sovereign of thislittle circle. For we can say what we will about democracy, but whena child is born unto a man that man unconsciously puts on the purple. He becomes the ruler and sits on the throne of authority. He evenseeks to cloak his weaknesses and his mistakes in that threadbare oldfabrication about the divine right of kings. But I can see that he isoften wrong, and even my Dinkie can see that he is not always right inhis decrees. More and more often, of late, I've observed the boystudying his father, studying him with an impersonal and critical eye. And this habit of silent appraisal is plainly something which Duncanresents, and resents keenly. He's beginning to have a feeling, I'mafraid, that he can't quite get _at_ the boy. And there's a youthfulshyness growing up in Dinkie which seems to leave him ashamed of anydisplay of emotion before his father. I can see that it even begins toexasperate Duncan a little, to be shut out behind those incontestablewalls of reserve. It's merely, I'm sure, that the child is so terriblyafraid of ridicule. He already nurses a hankering to be regarded asone of the grown-ups and imagines there's something rather babyish inany undue show of feeling. Yet he is hungry for affection. And heaches, I know, for the approbation of his male parent, for theapproval of a full-grown man whom he can regard as one of his ownkind. He even imitates his father in the way in which he stands infront of the fire, with his heels well apart. And he gives me chillsup the spine by pulling short on one bridle-rein and making Buntie, his mustang-pony, pirouette just as the wicked-tempered Briquettesometimes pirouettes when his father is in the saddle. YetDinky-Dunk's nerves are a bit ragged and there are times when he's notalways just with the boy, though it's not for me to confute what theinstinctive genius of childhood has already made reasonably clear toDinkie's discerning young eye. But I can not, of course, encourageinsubordination. All I can do is to ignore the unwelcome and try tocrowd it aside with happier things. I want my boy to love me, as Ilove him. And I think he does. I _know_ he does. That knowledge is anazure and bottomless lake into which I can toss my blackest pebbles offear, my flintiest doubts of the future. 

_Sunday the Fourth_

I wish I could get by the scruff of the neck that sophomoric oldphilosopher who once said nothing survives being thought of. For I'vebeen learning, this last two or three days, just how wide of the markhe shot. And it's all arisen out of Dinky-Dunk's bland intimation thatI am "a withered beauty. " Those words have held like a fish-hook inthe gills of my memory. If they'd come from somebody else theymightn't have meant so much. But from one's own husband--Wow!--they goin like a harpoon. And they have given me a great deal to think about. There are times, I find, when I can accept that intimation of slippinginto the sere and yellow leaf without revolt. Then the next moment itfills me with a sort of desperation. I refuse to go up on the shelf. Isee red and storm against age. I refuse to bow to the inevitable. Myspirit recoils at the thought of decay. For when you're fading you'resurely decaying, and when you're decaying you're approaching the end. So stop, Father Time, stop, or I'll get out of the car!

But we can't get out of the car. That's the tragic part of it. We haveto go on, whether we like it or not. We have to buck up, and grin andbear it, and make the best of a bad bargain. And Heaven knows I'venever wanted to be one of the Glooms! I've no hankering to sit withthe Sob Sisters and pump brine over the past. I'm light-hearted enoughif they'll only give me a chance. I've always believed in getting whatwe could out of life and looking on the sunny side of things. And thedisturbing part of it is, I don't _feel_ withered--not by a jugful!There are mornings when I can go about my homely old duties singinglike a prairie Tetrazzini. There are days when I could do ahand-spring, if for nothing more than to shock my solemn oldDinky-Dunk out of his dourness. There are times when we go skimmingalong the trail with the crystal-cool evening air in our faces and thesun dipping down toward the rim of the world when I want to thankSomebody I can't see for Something-or-other I can't define. _Dumvivimus vivamus. _

But it seems hard to realize that I'm a sedate and elderly ladyalready on the shady side of thirty. A woman over thirty yearsold--and I can remember the days of my intolerant youth when Iregarded the woman of thirty as an antiquated creature who should bepiously preparing herself for the next world. And it doesn't takethirty long to slip into forty. And then forty merges into fifty--andthere you are, a nice old lady with nervous indigestion andknitting-needles and a tendency to breathe audibly after ascending thefront-stairs. No wonder, last night, it drove me to taking a volume ofGeorge Moore down from the shelf and reading his chapter on "The Womanof Thirty. " But I found small consolation in that over-uxorious essay, feeling as I did that I knew life quite as well as any amorousstudio-rat who ever made copy out of his mottled past. So I wasdriven, in the end, to studying myself long and intently in thebroken-hinged mirrors of my dressing-table. And I didn't find muchthere to fortify my quailing spirit. I was getting on a bit. I wascurling up a little around the edges. There was no denying that fact. For I could see a little fan-light of lines at the outer corner ofeach eye. And down what Dinky-Dunk once called the honeyed corners ofmy mouth went another pair of lines which clearly came from too muchlaughing. But most unmistakably of all there was a line coming undermy chin, a small but tell-tale line, announcing the fact that I wasn'tlosing any in weight, and standing, I suppose, one of the foot-hillswhich precede the Rocky-Mountain dewlaps of old age. It wouldn't belong, I could see, before I'd have to start watching my diet, andlooking for a white hair or two, and probably give up horsebackriding. And then settle down into an ingle-nook old dowager with ahassock under _my_ feet and a creak in my knees and a fixed convictionthat young folks never acted up in _my_ youth as they act upnowadays. 

I tried to laugh it away, but my heart went down like a dredge-dipper. Whereupon I set my jaw, which didn't make me look any younger. But Ididn't much care, for the mirror had already done its worst. 

"Not muchee!" I said as I sat there making faces at myself. "You'restill one of the living. The bloom may be off in a place or two, butyou're sound to the core, and serviceable for many a year. So _sursumcorda! 'Rung ho! Hira Singh!_' as Chinkie taught us to shout in theold polo days. And that means, Go in and win, Chaddie McKail, and diewith your boots on if you have to. "

I was still intent on that study of my robust-looking but slightlyweather-beaten map when Dinky-Dunk walked in and caught me in themiddle of my Narcissus act. 

"'All is vanity saith the Preacher, '" he began. But he stopped shortwhen I swung about at him. For I hadn't, after all, been able tocarpenter together even a whale-boat of consolation out of my wreckedschooner of hope. 

"Oh, Kakaibod, " I wailed, "I'm a pie-faced old has-been, and nobodywill ever love me again!"

He only laughed, on his way out, and announced that I seemed to begetting my share of loving, as things went. But he didn't take backwhat he said about me being withered. And the first thing I shall doto-morrow, when Gershom comes down to breakfast, will be to ask himhow old Cleopatra was when she brought Antony to his knees and howantiquated Ninon D'Enclos was when she lost her power over thatsemi-civilized creature known as Man. Gershom will know, for Gershomknows everything. 

_Wednesday the Seventh_

Gershom has been studying some of my carbon-prints. He can't for thelife of him understand why I consider Dewing's _Old-fashioned Gown_ sobeautiful, or why I should love Childe Hassam's _Church at Old Lyme_or see anything remarkable about Metcalf's _May Night_. But I cherishthem as one cherishes photographs of lost friends. 

A couple of the Horatio Walker's, he acknowledged, seemed to meansomething to him. But Gershom's still in the era when he demands astory in the picture and could approach Monet and Degas only by way ofMeissonier and Bouguereau. And a print, after all, is only a print. He's slightly ashamed to admire beauty as mere beauty, contending thatat the core of all such things there should be a moral. So wepow-wowed for an hour and more over the threadbare old theme and themost I could get out of Gershom was that the lady in _TheOld-fashioned Gown_ reminded him of me, only I was more vital. But allthat talk about landscape and composition and line and tone made memomentarily homesick for a glimpse of Old Lyme again, before I go tomy reward. 

But the mood didn't last. And I no longer regret what's lost. I don'tknow what mysterious Divide it is I have crossed over, but it seems tobe peace I want now instead of experience. I'm no longer envious ofthe East and all it holds. I'm no longer fretting for wider circles oflife. The lights may be shining bright on many a board-walk, at thismoment, but it means little to this ranch-lady. What I want now is abetter working-plan for that which has already been placed before me. Often and often, in the old days, when I realized how far away fromthe world this lonely little island of Casa Grande and its inhabitantsstood, I used to nurse a ghostly envy for the busier tideways of lifefrom which we were banished. I used to feel that grandeur was in someway escaping me. I could picture what was taking place in some ofthose golden-gray old cities I had known: The Gardens of theLuxembourg when the horse-chestnuts were coming out in bloom, and theChâteau de Madrid in the Bois at the luncheon hour, or the Pre Catalanon a Sunday with heavenly sole in lemon and melted butter and a stillmore heavenly waltz as you sat eating _fraises des bois_ smothered inthick _crême d'Isigny_. Or the Piazzi di Spagna on Easter Sunday withthe murmur of Rome in your ears and the cars and carriages flashingthrough the green-gold shadows of the Pincio. Or Hyde Park in May, with the sun sifting through the brave old trees and flashing on thehelmets of the Life Guards as the King goes by in a scarlet uniformwith the blue Order of the Garter on his breast, or Park Lane on aglorious light-and-shadow afternoon in June and a dip into thefamiliar old Americanized clangor at the Cecil; or Chinkie's place inDevonshire about a month earlier, sitting out on the terrace wrappedin steamer-rugs and waiting for the moon to come up and the firstnightingale to sing. Of Fifth Avenue shining almost bone-white in theclear December sunlight and the salted nuts and orange-blossomcocktails at Sherry's, or the Plaza tea-room at about five o'clock inthe afternoon with the smell of Turkish tobacco and golden pekoe andhot-house violets and Houbigant's _Quelque-fleurs_ all tangled uptogether. Or the City of Wild Parsley in March with a wave of wildflowers breaking over the ruins of Selinunte and the tumbling pillarsof the Temple of Olympian Zeus lying time-mellowed in the clearSicilian sunlight!

They were all lovely enough, and still are, I suppose, but it's aloveliness in some way involved with youth. So the memory of thosefar-off gaieties, which, after all, were so largely physical, nolonger touch me with unrest. They're wine that's drunk and waterthat's run under the bridge. Younger lips can drink of that cup, whichwas sweet enough in its time. Let the newer girls dance their legs offunder the French crystals of the Ritz, and powder their noses over theFountain of the Sunken Boat, and eat the numbered duck soreverentially doled out at La Tour d'Argent and puff their cigarettesbehind the beds of begonias and marguerites at the Château Madrid. They too will get tired of it, and step aside for others. For thepetal falls from the blossom and the blossom plumps out into fruit. And all those golden girls, when their day is over, must slip awayfrom those gardens of laughter. When they don't, they only makethemselves ridiculous. For there's nothing sadder than an antique ladyof other days decking herself out in the furbelows of a lost youth. And I've got Dinky-Dunk's overalls to patch and my bread to set, so Ican't think much more about it to-night. But after I've done mychores, and before I go up to bed, I'm going to read _Rabbi Ben Ezra_right through to the end. I'll do it in front of the fire, with myfeet up and with three Ontario Northern Spy apples on a plate besideme, to be munched as Audrey herself might have munched them, obliviousof any Touchstone and his reproving eyes. 

I have stopped to ponder, however, how much of this morbid dread ofmine for big cities is due to that short and altogether unsatisfactoryvisit to New York, to that sense of coming back a stranger and findingold friends gone and those who were left with such entirely newinterests. 

I was out of it, completely and dishearteningly out of it. And myclothes were all wrong. My hats were wrong; my shoes were wrong; andevery rag I had on me was in some way wrong. I was a tourist from theprovinces. And I wasn't up-to-date with either what was on me or was_in_ me. I didn't even know the new subway routes or the telephonerules or the proper places to go for tea. The Metropolitan lookedcramped and shoddy and _Tristan_ seemed shoddily sung to me. There wasno thrill to it. And even _The Jewels of the Madonna_ impressed me asa bit garish and off color, with the Apache Dance of the last actalmost an affront to God and man. I even asked myself, when I foundthat I had lost the trick of laughing at bridal-suite farces, if itwas the possession of children that had changed me. For when you'rewith children you must in some way match their snowy innocence with akindred coloring of innocence, very much as the hare and the weaseland the ptarmigan turn white to match the whiteness of our northernwinter. Yet I was able to wring pure joy out of Rachmaninoff's playingat Carnegie Hall, with a great man making music for music's sake. Iloved the beauty and balance and splendid sanity of that playing, without keyboard fire-works and dazzle and glare. But Rachmaninoff wasthe exception. Even Central Park seemed smaller than of old, and Icouldn't remember which drives Dinky-Dunk and I had taken in thehistoric old hansom-cab after our equally historic marriage byricochet. Fifth Avenue itself was different, the caterpillar of tradehaving crawled a little farther up the stalk of fashion, for theshops, I found, went right up to the Park, and the old W. K. Housewhere we once danced our long-forgotten Dresden China Quadrille, inimitation of the equally forgotten Eighty-Three event, confronted meas a beehive of business offices. I couldn't quite get used to the newnames and the new faces and the new shops and the side-street theatersand the thought of really nice girls going to a prize-fight inMadison Square Garden, and the eternal and never-ending talk aboutdrinks, about where and how to get them, and how to mix them, and howmuch Angostura to put into 'em, and the musty ale that used to be hadat Losekam's in Washington, and the _Beaux Arts_ cocktails that usedto come with a dash of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotchwhich somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end ofCuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began to feel that the onlyimportant thing in the world was the possession and dispensation ofalcohol. And out of it I got the headache without getting the fun. Ihad the same dull sense of being cheated which came to me in myflapper days when I fell asleep with a mouthful of contraband gum andwoke up in the morning with my jaw-muscles tired--I'd been facing allthe exertion without getting any of the satisfaction. 

The one bright spot to me, in that lost city of my childhood, was thepart of Madison Avenue which used to be known as Murray Hill, theright-of-way along the west sidewalk of which I once commandeered foran afternoon's coasting. I could see again, as I glanced down thefamiliar slope, the puffy figure of old Major Elmes, who in thosedays was always pawing somebody, since he seemed to believe withNovalis that he touched heaven when he placed his hand on a humanbody. I could see myself sky-hooting down that icy slope on mycoaster, approaching the old Major from the rear and peremptorilypiping out: "One side, please!" For I was young then, and I expectedall life to make way for me. But the old Major betrayed no intentionof altering his solemnly determined course at any such juvenilesuggestion, with the result that he sat down on me bodily, and for thenext two blocks approached his club in Madison Square in a manner andat a speed which he had in no wise anticipated. But, _Eheu_, how longago it all seemed!

_Saturday the Tenth_

Peter has written back in answer to my question as to the expediencyof sending my boy off to a boarding-school. He put all he had to sayin two lines. They were:

"_I had a mother like Dinkie's, I'd stick to her until the stars weredust. _"

That was very nice of Peter, of course, but I don't imagine he had anyidea of the peck of trouble he was going to stir up at Casa Grande. For Dinky-Dunk picked up the sheet of paper on which thatlight-hearted message had been written and perused the two lines, perused them with a savagery which rather disturbed me. He read themfor the second time, and then he put them down. His eye, as heconfronted me, was a glacial one. 

"It's too bad we can't run this show without the interference ofoutsiders, " he announced as he stalked out of the room. 

I've been thinking the thing over, and trying to get my husband'sview-point. But I can't quite succeed. There has always been a touchof the satyric in Dinky-Dunk's attitude toward Peter's weekly letterto my boy. He has even intimated that they were written in a new kindof Morse, the inference being that they were intended to carrymessages in cipher to eyes other than Dinkie's. But Peter is much toohonest a man for any such resort to subterfuge. And Dinky-Dunk hasalways viewed with a hostile eye the magazines and books and toyswhich big-hearted Peter has showered out on us. Peter always wasridiculously open-handed. And he always loved my Dinkie. And it's onlynatural that our thoughts should turn back to where our love has beenleft. Peter, I know, gets quite as much fun out of those elaboratelyplayful letters to Dinkie as Dinkie does himself. And it's left theboy more anxious to learn, to the end that he may pen a morerespectable reply to them. 

Some of Peter's gifts, it is true, have been embarrassingly ornate, but Peter, who has been given so much, must have remembered how littlehas come to my kiddies. It was my intention, for a while, to talk thisover with Dinky-Dunk, to try to make him see it in a more reasonablelight. But I have now given up that intention. There's a phantasmalsomething that holds me back. .. . 

I dreamt last night that my little Dinkie was a grown youth in a Greekacademy, wearing a toga and sitting on a marble bench overlooking asea of lovely sapphire. There both Peter and Percy, also arrayed intogas, held solemn discourse with my offspring and finally agreed thatonce they were through with him he would be the Wonder of the Age. .. . 

Dinky-Dunk asked me point-blank to-day if I'd consider the sale ofCasa Grande, provided he got the right price for the ranch. I felt, for a moment, as though the bottom had been knocked out of my world. But it showed me the direction in which my husband's thoughts havebeen running of late. And I just as pointedly retorted that I'd neverconsent to the sale of Casa Grande. It's not merely because it's ourone and only home. It's more because of the little knoll where thefour Manitoba maples have been set and the row of prairie-roses havebeen planted along the little iron fence, the little iron fence whichtwice a year I paint a virginal white, with my own hands. For that'swhere my Pee-Wee sleeps, and that lonely little grave must never passout of my care, to be forgotten and neglected and tarnished withtime. It's not a place of sorrow now, but more an altar, duly tended, the flower-covered bed of my Pee-Wee, of my poor little Pee-Wee whowas so brimming with life and love. He used to make me think of ahumming-bird in a garden--and now all I have left of him is my smallchest of toys and trinkets and baby-clothes. God, I know, will be goodto that lonely little newcomer in His world of the statelier dead, inHis gallery of whispering ghosts. Oh, be good to him, God! Be good tohim, or You shall be no God of mine! I can't think of him as dead, asgoing out like a candle, as melting into nothingness as the littlebones under their six feet of earth molder away. But my laddie isgone. And I must not be morbid. As Peter once said, misery lovescompany, but the company is apt to seek more convivial quarters. Yetsomething has gone out of my life, and that something drives me backto my Dinkie and my Poppsy with a sort of fierceness in my hunger tolove them, to make the most of them. 

Gershom, who has been giving Poppsy a daily lesson at home, has justinquired why she shouldn't be sent to school along with Dinkie. Andher father has agreed. It gave me the wretched feeling, for a momentor two, that they were conspiring to take my last baby away from me. But I have to bow to the fact that I no longer possess one, sincePoppsy announced her preference, the other day, for a doll "with reallivings in it. " She begins to show as fixed an aversion to baby-talkas that entertained by old Doctor Johnson himself, and no longeryearns to "do yidin on the team-tars, " as she used to express it. Theword "birthday" is still "birfday" with her, and "water" is still"wagger, " but she now religiously eschews all such reiterativediminutives as "roundy-poundy" and "Poppsy-Woppsy" and "beddy-bed. "She has even learned, after much effort, to convert her earlier "keamof feet" into the more legitimate and mature "cream of wheat. " And nowthat she has a better mastery of the sibilants the charm has rathergone out of the claim, which I so laboriously taught her, that "Daddyis all feet, " meaning, of course, that he was altogether sweet--whichhe gave small sign of being when he first caught the point of mypatient schooling. She is not so quick-tongued as her brother Dinkie, but she has a natural fastidiousness which makes her long foralignment with the proprieties. She is, in fact, a conformist, asedate and dignified little lady who will never be greatly given tothe spilling of beans and the upsetting of apple-carts. She is, inmany ways, amazingly like her pater. She will, I know, be a nice girlwhen she grows up, without very much of that irresponsibility whichseems to have been the bugbear of her maternal parent. I'm evenbeginning to believe there's something in the old tradition aboutancestral traits so often skipping a generation. At any rate, thatcrazy-hearted old Irish grandmother of mine passed on to me a muckleo' her wildness, the mad County Clare girl who swore at the vicar androde to hounds and could take a seven-barred gate without turning ahair and was apt to be always in love or in debt or in hot water. Shedied too young to be tamed, I'm told, for say what you will, lifetames us all in the end. Even Lady Hamilton took to wearingred-flannel petticoats before she died, and Buffalo Bill faded downinto plain Mr. William Cody, and the abducted Helen of Troy gave manya day up to her needlework, we are told, and doubtlessly had troublewith both her teeth and her waist measurement. 

Dinky-Dunk is proud of his Poppsy and has announced that it's abouttime we tucked the "Poppsy" away with her baby-clothes and resorted tothe use of the proper and official "Pauline Augusta. " So Pauline weshall try to have it, after this. There are several things, I think, which draw Dinky-Dunk and his Poppsy--I mean his Pauline--together. One is her likeness to himself. Another is her tractability, though Ihate to hitch so big a word on to so small a lady. And still anotheris the fact that she is a girl. There's a subliminal play ofsex-attraction about it, I suppose, just as there probably is betweenDinkie and me. And there's something very admirable in PaulineAugusta's staid adoration of her dad. She plays up to him, I can see, without quite knowing she's doing it. She's hungry for his approval, and happiest, always, in his presence. Then, too, she makes himforget, for the time at least, his disappointment in a soul-mate whohasn't quite measured up to expectations! And I devoutly thank theMaster of Life and Love that my solemn old Dinky-Dunk can thus carefor his one and only daughter. It softens him, and keeps the sordidworries of the moment from vitrifying his heart. It puts a rainbow inhis sky of every-day work, and gives him something to plan and plotand live for. And he needs it. We all do. It's our human and naturalhunger for companionship. And as he observed not long ago, if thathunger can't be satisfied at home, we wander off and snatch what wecan on the wing. Some day when they're rich, I overheard Dinky-Dunkannouncing the other night, Pauline Augusta and her Dad are going tomake the Grand Tour of Europe. And there, undoubtedly, do their bestto pick up a Prince of the Royal Blood and have a château in Lombardyand a villa on the Riviera and a standing invitation to all theEmbassy Balls!

Well, not if I know it. None of that penny-a-liner moonshine for mydaughter. And as she grows older, I feel sure, I'll have moreinfluence over her. She'll begin to realize that the battle of lifehasn't scarred up for nothing this wary-eyed old mater who's beginningto know a hawk from a henshaw. I've learned a thing or two in my day, and one or two of them are going to be passed on to my offspring. 

_Thursday the Fifteenth_

Struthers and I have been house-cleaning, for this is the middle ofMay, and our reluctant old northern spring seems to be here for good. It has been backward, this year, but the last of the mud has gone, andI hope to have my first setting of chicks out in a couple of days. Dinkie wants to start riding Buntie to school, but his pater saysotherwise. Gershom goes off every morning, with Calamity Kate hitchedto the old buckboard, with my two kiddies packed in next to him andprovender enough for himself and the kiddies and Calamity Kate underthe seat. The house seems very empty when they are away. But some timeabout five, every afternoon, I see them loping back along the trail. Then comes the welcoming bark of old Bobs, and a raid on thecooky-jar, and traces of bread-and-jelly on two hungry little faces, and the familiar old tumult about the reanimated rooms of Casa Grande. Then Poppsy--I beg her ladyship's pardon, for I mean, of course, Pauline Augusta--has to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself thatthey are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, for PaulineAugusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie fallsto working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quiteindependent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed adisheartening disability for flight. But even this second effort, I'mafraid, is doomed to failure, for more than once I've seen Dinkie backaway and stand regarding his incompetent flier with a look offrustration on his face. He is always working over machinery--for heloves anything with wheels--and I'm pretty well persuaded that thetwentieth-century mania of us grown-ups for picking ourselves topieces is nothing more than a development of this childish hunger toget the cover off things and see the works go round. Dinkie makeswagons and carts and water-wheels, but some common fatality ofincompetence overtakes them all and they are cast aside forenterprises more novel and more promising. He announces, now, that heintends to be an engineer. And that recalls the time when I wasconvinced in my own soul that he was destined for a life of art, sincehe was forever asking me to draw him "a li'l' man, " and later on fellto drawing them himself. He would do his best to inscribe a circleand then emboss it with perfectly upright hair, as though the personin question had just been perusing the most stirring ofpenny-dreadfuls. Then he would put in two dots of eyes, and oneabbreviated and vertical line for the nose, and another elongated andhorizontal line for the mouth, and arms with extended and extremelyelocutionary fingers, to say nothing of extremely attenuated legswhich invariably toed-out, to make more discernible the silhouette ofthe ponderously booted feet. I have several dozen of these "li'l' men"carefully treasured in an old cigar-box. But he soon lost interest inthese purely anthropocentric creations and broadened out into thedelineation of boats and cars and wheel-barrows and rocking-chairs andtea-pots, lying along the floor on his stomach for an hour at a time, his tongue moving sympathetically with every movement of his pencil. He held the latter clutched close to the point by his stubby littlefingers. 

I had to call a halt on all such artistry, however, for he startledme, one day, by suddenly going crosseyed. It came, of course, fromworking with his nose too close to the paper. I imagined, with asinking heart, that it was an affliction which was to stay with himfor the rest of his natural life. But a night's sleep did much torestore the over-taxed eye-muscles and before the end of a week theyhad entirely righted themselves. 

To-morrow Dinkie will probably want to be an aeronaut, and the nextday a cowboy, and the next an Indian scout, for I notice that hisenthusiasms promptly conform to the stimuli with which he chances tobe confronted. Last Sunday he asked me to read Macaulay's _Horatius_to him. I could see, after doing so, that it was going to his headexactly as a second Clover-Club cocktail goes to the head of asub-deb. On Tuesday, when I went out about sun-down to get him to helpme gather the eggs, I found that he had made a sword by nailing a bitof stick across a slat from the hen-house, and also observed that hehad possessed himself of my boiler-top. So I held back, slightlypuzzled. But later on, hearing much shouting and clouting and bangingof tin, I quietly investigated and found Dinkie in the corral-gate, holding it against all comers. So earnest was he about it, so rapt washe in that solemn business of warfare, that I decided to slip awaywithout letting him see me. He was sixteen long centuries away fromCasa Grande, at that moment. He was afar off on the banks of theTiber, defending the Imperial City against Lars Porsena and hisfootmen. All Rome was at his back, cheering him on, and every time hishen-coop slat thumped that shredded old poplar gate-post some proudson of Tuscany bit the dust. 

_Sunday the Twenty-Fifth_

Duncan, it's plain to see, is still in the doldrums. He isuncommunicative and moody and goes about his work with a listlessnesswhich is more and more disturbing to me. He surprised his wife theother day by addressing her as "Lady Selkirk, " for the simple reason, he later explained, that I propose to be monarch of all I survey, withnone to dispute my domain. And a little later he further intimatedthat I was like a miser with a pot of gold, satisfied to live anywhereso long as my precious family-life could go clinking through myfingers. 

That was last Sunday--a perfect prairie day--when I sat out on the endof the wagon-box, watching Poppsy and Dinkie. I sat in the warmsunlight, in a sort of trance, staring at those two children as theywent about their solemn business of play. They impressed me as twohusky and happy-bodied little beings and I remembered that whateverprairie-life had cost me, it had not cost me the health of my family. My two bairns had been free of those illnesses and infections whichcome to the city child, and I was glad enough to remember it. But Iwas unconscious of Dinky-Dunk's cynic eye on me as I sat therebrooding over my chicks. When he spoke to me, in fact, I was thinkinghow odd it was that Josie Langdon, on the very day before hermarriage, should have carried me down to the lower end of Fifth Avenueand led me into the schoolroom of the Church of the Ascension, andasked me to study Sorolla's _Triste Herencia_ which hangs there. 

I can still see that wonderful canvas where the foreshore of Valencia, usually so vivacious with running figures and the brightest ofsunlight on dancing sails, had been made the wine-dark sea of thepagan questioner with the weight of immemorial human woe to shadow it. Josie had been asking me about marriage and children, for even she wasknowing her more solemn moments in the midst of all that feverishlyorganized merriment. But I was surprised, when she slipped a handthrough my arm, to see a tear run down her nose. So I looked up againat Sorolla's picture of the naked little cripples snatching at theirmoment's joy along the water's edge, at his huddled group of maimedand cast-off orphans trying to be happy without quite knowing how. Ican still see the stunted little bodies, naked in sunlight thatseemed revealing without being invigorating, clustered about theguardian figure of the tall old priest in black, the somberlybenignant old figure that towered above the little wrecks on crutchesand faced, as majestic as Millet's _Sower_, as austere and unmoved asFate itself, a dark sea overhung by a dark sky. Sorolla was great inthat picture, to my way of thinking. He was great in the manner inwhich he attunes nature to a human mood, in which he gives you thesunlight muffled, in some way, like the sunlight during a partialeclipse, and keys turbulence down to quietude, like the soft pedalthat falls on a noisy street when a hearse goes by. 

Josie felt it, and I felt it, that wordless thinning down of radiance, that mysterious holding back of warmth, until it seemed to strike achill into the bones. It was the darker wing of Destiny hovering overman's head, deepening at the same time that it shadows the recedingsky-line, so that even the memory of it, a thousand miles away, coulddrain the jocund blitheness out of the open prairie and give an air ofpathos and solitude to my own children playing about my feet. Sorolla, I remembered, had little ones of his own. He _knew_. Life had taughthim, and in teaching, had enriched his art. For the artist, after all, is the man who cuts up the loaf of his own heart, and butters it withbeauty, and at tuppence a slice hands it to the hungry children of theworld. 

So when Dinky-Dunk laughed at me, for going into a trance over my ownchildren, I merely smiled condoningly back at him. I felt vaguelysorry for him. He wasn't getting out of them what I was getting. Hewas being cheated, in some way, out of the very harvest for which hehad sowed and waited. And if he had come to me, in that mood ofrelapse, if he had come to me with the slightest trace of humility, with the slightest touch of entreaty, on his face, I'd have hugged hissalt-and-peppery old head to my bosom and begged to start all overagain with a clean slate. .. . 

Gershom and I get along much better than I had expected. There'snothing wrong with the boy except his ineradicable temptation toimpart to you his gratuitous tidbits of information. I can't object, of course, to Gershom having a college education: what I object to ishis trying to give me one. I don't mind his wisdom, but I do hate tosee him tear the whole tree of knowledge up by the roots and floorone with it. He has just informed me that there are estimated to be30, 000, 000, 000, 000 red blood corpuscles in this body of mine, and Imade him blink by solemnly challenging him to prove it. Quitefrequently and quite sternly, too, he essays to correct my English. Hereproved me for saying: "Go to it, Gershom!" And he declared I was inerror in saying "The goose hangs high, " as that was merely a vulgarcorruption for "The goose whangs high, " the "whanging" being the callof the wild geese high in the air when the weather is settled andfair. We live and learn!

But I can't help liking this pedagogic old Gershom who takes himselfand me and all the rest of the world so seriously. I like him becausehe shares in my love for Dinkie and stands beside Peter himself in thefondly foolish belief that Dinkie has somewhere the hidden germ ofgreatness in him. Not that my boy is one of those precocious littlebounders who are so precious in the eyes of their parents and soodious to the eyes of the rest of the world. He is a large-boned boy, almost a rugged-looking boy, and it is only I, knowing him as I do, who can fathom the sensibilities housed in that husky young body. There is a misty broodiness in his eyes which leaves themindescribably lovely to me as I watch him in his moments of raptness. But that look doesn't last long, for Dinkie can be rough in play andat times rough in speech, and deep under the crust of character Iimagine I see traces of his Scottish father in him. I watch with aneagle eye for any outcroppings of that Caledonian-granite strain inhis make-up. I inspect him as Chinkie used to inspect his fruit-treesfor San José scale, for if there is any promise of hardness or crueltythere I want it killed in the bud. 

But I don't worry as I used to, on that score. He may be rough-built, but moods cluster thick about him, like butterflies on a shelf ofbroken rock. And he is both pliable and responsive. I can shake him, when in the humor, by the mere telling of a story. I can control hiscolor, I can excite him and exalt him, and bring him to the verge oftears, if I care to, by the mere tone of my voice as I read him one ofhis favorite tales out of one of Peter's books. But I shrink, in away, from toying with those feelings. It seems brutal, cruel, merciless. For he is, after all, a delicate instrument, to be treatedwith delicacy. The soul of him must be kept packed away, like aviolin, in its case of reserve well-padded with discretion. Twothings I see in him: tenseness and beauty. And these are things whichare lost, with rough handling. He shrinks away from brutality. Always, when he came to the picture of Samson pulling down the pillars of thetemple, in Whinstane Sandy's big old illustrated Bible, he used tocover with one small hand a certain child on the temple steps asthough to protect to the last that innocent one from the fallingcolumns and cornices. 

But I'm worried, at times, about Dinky-Dunk's attitude toward the boy. There are ways in which he demands too much from the child. His fatheris often unnecessarily rough in his play with him, seeming to take amorose delight in goading him to the breaking point and then lamentinghis lack of grit, edging him on to the point of exasperation and thenheaping scorn on him for his weakness. More than once I've seen hisfather actually hurt him, although the child was too proud to admitit. Dinky-Dunk, I think, really wants his boy to be a bigger figure inthe world than his dad. Milord's a middle-aged man now and knows hislimitations. He has realized just how high the supremest high-watermark of his life will stand. And being human, he must nurse his humanregrets over his failures in life. So now he wishes to see histhwarted powers come to fuller fruit in his offspring. I'm afraid he'deven run the risk of sacrificing the boy's happiness for the sake ofknowing Dinkie's wagon was to be hitched to the star of success. For Iknow my husband well enough to realize that he has always hankeredafter worldly success, that his god, if he had any, has always beenthe god of Power. I, too, want to see my son a success. But I want himto be happy first. I want to see him get some of the things I've beencheated out of, that I've cheated myself out of. That's the only waynow I can get even with life. I can't live my own days over again. ButI can catch at the trick of living them over again in my Dinkie. 

_Thursday the Twenty-Ninth_

We have arrived at an armistice, Dinky-Dunk and I. It was forced onus, for things couldn't have gone on in the old intolerable manner. Dinky-Dunk, I fancy, began to realize that he hadn't been quite fair, and started making oblique but transparent enough efforts atappeasement. When he sat down close beside me, and I moved away, hesaid in a spirit of exaggerated self-accusation: "I'm afraid I've gota peach-stain on my reputation!" I retorted, at that, that she hadnever impressed me as much of a peach. Whereupon he merely laughed, asthough it were a joke out of a Midnight Revue. Then he clipped aluridly illustrated advertisement of a nerve-medicine out of hisnewspaper and pinned it on my bedroom door, after I had ignored histentative knock thereon the night before. The picture showed an anemicand woebegone couple haggling and shaking their fists at each other, while a large caption announced that "Thousands of Married Folks Leada Cat and Dog Life--Are Cross, Crabbed and Grumpy!"--all of whichcould be obviated if they used Oxygated Iron. 

What made it funny, of course, was the ridiculousness of the drawing. Then Dinky-Dunk, right before the blushing Gershom, accused me ofbeing a love-piker. I could sniff which way the wind was blowing, butI sat tight. Then, to cap the climax, my husband announced that he hadsomething for me which was surely going to melt my mean old prairieheart. And late that afternoon he came trundling up to Casa Grandewith nothing more nor less than an old prairie-schooner. 

It startled me, when I first caught sight of it. But its acquisitionwas not so miraculous as it might have seemed. Dinky-Dunk, who is aborn dickerer, has been trading some of his ranch-stock for town-lotson the outskirts of Buckhorn. On the back of one of these lots stood atumble-down wooden building, and hidden away in this building was theprairie-schooner. Something about it had caught his fancy, so he hadinsisted that it be included in the deal. And home he brought it, withTithonus and Tumble-Weed yoked to its antique tongue and his ownStetsoned figure high on the driving seat. They had told Dinky-Dunk itwasn't a really-truly authentic prairie-schooner, since practicallyall of the trekking north of the Fiftieth Parallel has been done bymeans of the Red River cart. But Dinky-Dunk, after looking morecarefully over the heavy-timbered running-gear and the cumbersomeiron-work, and discovering even the sturdy hooks under its belly fromwhich the pails and pots of earlier travelers must have hung, concluded that it was one of the genuine old-timers, one of the"Murphies" once driven by a "bull-whacker" and drawn by "wheelers" and"pointers. " Where it originally came from, Heaven only knows. But ithad been used, five years before, for a centenary procession in theprovincial capital and had emerged into the open again last summer fora town-booming _Rodeo_ twenty miles down the steel from Buckhorn. Itlooked like the dinosaur skeleton in the Museum of Natural History, with every vestige of its tarpaulin top gone. But Whinnie has alreadysewed together a canvas covering for its weather-beaten old roof-ribs, and has put clean wheat-straw in its box-bottom, so that it makes akingly place for my two kiddies to play. I even spotted Dinkie, enthroned high on the big driving-seat, with a broken binder-whip inhis hand, imagining he was one of the original Forty-Niners pioneeringalong the unknown frontiers of an unknown land. I could see him duckat imaginary arrows and frenziedly defend his family from imaginarySioux with an imaginary musket. And I stood beside it this morning, dreaming of the adventures it must have lumbered through, of thefreight it must have carried and the hopes it must have ferried as itonce crawled westward along the floor of the world, from water-hole tolonely water-hole. I've been wondering if certain perforations in itsside-boards can be bullet-holes and if certain dents and abrasions inits timbers mean the hostile arrows of skulking Apaches when women andchildren crouched low behind the ramparts of this tiny woodenfortress. I can't help picturing what those women and children had toendure, and how trivial, after all, are our puny hardships comparedwith theirs. 

And I don't intend to dwell on those hardships. I'm holding out thehand of compromise to my fellow-trekker. Existence is only aprairie-schooner, and we have to accommodate ourselves to it. And Ithank Heaven now that I can see things more clearly and accept themmore quietly. That's a lesson Time teaches us. And Father Time, afterall, has to hand us something to make up for so mercilesslypermitting us to grow old. It leaves us more tolerant. We're notallowed to demand more life, but we can at least ask for more light. So I intend to be cool-headedly rational about it all. I'm going tokeep Reason on her throne. I'm going to be a bitter-ender, in at leastone thing: I'm going to stick to my Dinky-Dunk to the last ditch. I'mgoing to patch up the old top and forget the old scars. For we're inthe same schooner, and we must make the most of it. And if I have toeat my pot of honey on the grave of all our older hopes, I'm at leastgoing to dig away at that pot until its bottom is scraped clean. I'mgoing to remain the neck-or-nothing woman I once prided myself onbeing. I'm even going to overlook Dinky-Dunk's casual cruelty inannouncing, when I half-jokingly inquired why he preferred other womento his own Better-Half, that no horse eats hay after being turned outto fresh grass. I'm going on, I repeat, no matter what happens. I'mgoing on to the desperate end, like my own Dinkie with thechocolate-cake when I warned him he'd burst if he dared to eat anotherpiece and he responded: "Then pass the cake, Mummy--and everybodystand back!"

_Tuesday the Fourth_

_Sursum corda_ is the word--so here goes! I am determined to be blitheand keep the salt of humor sprinkled thick across the butter-crock ofconcession. Dinky-Dunk watches me with a guarded and wary eye andPauline Augusta does not always approve of me. Yesterday, when I goton Briquette and made that fire-eater jump the two rain-barrels putend to end Dinky-Dunk told me I was too old to be taking a chance likethat. So I promptly and deliberately turned a somersault on theprairie-sod, just to show him I wasn't the old lady he was trying tomake me out. Gershom, who'd just got back with the children and wasunhitching Calamity Kate, retreated with his eyebrows up, toward thestable. And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw nothing butpained incredulity touched with reproof, for Poppsy is not a believerin the indecorous. She has herself staidly intimated that she'd preferthe rest of the family to address her as "Pauline Augusta" instead of"Poppsy" which still so unwittingly creeps into our talk. Sohereafter we must be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already sewa fine seam and array her seven dolls with a preciseness and neatnesswhich is to be highly commended. 

On Saturday, when we motored into Buckhorn for supplies, I escortedPauline Augusta to Hunk Granby, the town barber, to have her hair cutDutch. Her lip quivered and she gave every indication of an outbreak, for she was mortally afraid of that strange man and his still strangerclipping-machine. But I spotted a concert-guitar on a bench at theback of Hunk's emporium and as it was the noon-hour and there was noaudience, I rendered a jazz _obbligato_ to the snip of the scissors. 

"Say, Birdie, you'll sure have me buck and wing dancin' if you keepthat up!" remarked the man of the shears. I merely smiled and gave him_Texas Tommy_, _cum gusto_, whereupon he acknowledged he was havingdifficulty in making his feet behave. We became quite a companionablelittle family, in fact, as the bobbing process went on, and whenDinky-Dunk called for us as he'd promised he was patently scandalizedto find his superannuated old soul-mate sight-reading _When KatyCouldn't Katy Wouldn't_--it was a new one to me--in the second raggedplush shaving-chair of a none too clean barber-shop festooned withlithographs which would have made old Anthony Comstock turn in hisgrave. But you have to be feathered to the toes like a ptarmigan inthis northern country so that rough ways and rough winds can't strikea chill into you. The barber, in fact, refused to take any money forDutching my small daughter's hair, proclaiming that the music was morethan worth it. But my husband, with a dangerous light in his eye, insisted on leaving four bits on the edge of the shelf loaded downwith bottled beautifiers, and escorted us out to the muddy olddevil-wagon where Dinkie sat awaiting us. 

"Dinky-Dunk, " I said with a perfectly straight face as we climbed in, "what is it gives me such a mysterious influence over men?"

Instead of answering me, he merely ground his gears as though they hadbeen his own teeth. So I repeated my question. 

"Why don't you ask that school-teacher of yours?" he demanded. 

"But what, " I inquired, "has Gershom got to do with it?"

He turned and inspected me with such a pointed stare that we nearlyran into a Bain wagon full of bagged grain. 

"You don't suppose I can't see that that beanpole's fallen in lovewith you?" he rudely and raucously challenged. 

"Why, I feel exactly like a mother to that poor boy, " I innocentlyprotested. 

"Mother nothing!" snorted my lord and master. "Any fool could see he'sgoing mushy on you!"

I pretended to be less surprised than I really was, but it gave meconsiderable to think over. My husband was wrong, in a way, but nowoman feels bad at the thought that somebody is fond of her. It's niceto know there's a heart or two at which one can still warm one'soutstretched hands. The short-cut to ruin, with a man, is theknowledge that women are fond of him. But let a woman know that she isnot unloved and she walks the streets of Heaven, to say nothing ofnearly breaking her neck to make herself worthy of those transportingaffections. 

But I soon had other things to think of, that afternoon, for Dinkieand I had a little secret shopping to do. And in the midst of it Icaught the familiar tawny look which occasionally comes into myman-child's eyes. It's the look of dreaming, the look of broodingwildness where some unknown Celtic great-great-grandfather of agreat-great-grandfather stirs in his moorland grave like a collie-dogin his afternoon sleep. And it all arose out of nothing more than ablind beggar sitting on an upturned nail-keg at the edge of thesidewalk and rather miraculously playing a mouth-organ and a guitar atone and the same time. The guitar was a dog-eared old instrument thathad most decidedly seen better days, stained and bruised andgreasy-looking along the shank. The mouth-organ was held in positionby two wires that went about the beggar's neck, to leave his handsfree for strumming on the larger instrument. The music he made wassimple enough, rudimentary old waltz-tunes and plaintive old airs thatI hadn't heard for years. But I could see it go straight to the headof my boy. His intent young face took on the fierce emptiness of aBarres lion overlooking some time-worn desert. He forgot me, and heforgot the shopping that had kept him awake about half the night, andhe forgot Buckhorn and the fact that he was a small boy on the streetsof a bald little prairie town. He was thousands of years and thousandsof miles away from me. He was a king's son in Babylon, commanding thecourt-musicians to make sweet discourse for him. He was Saulharkening to David. He was a dreamy-eyed Pict listening to musicwafted at dusk from a Roman camp about which helmeted sentries paced. He was a medieval prince, falsely imprisoned, leaning from dark andlonely towers to catch the strains of some wandering troubadour fromhis native Southlands. He was a Magyar chieftain listening to themountain-side music of valleyed goat-herders with a touch of madnessto it. It engulfed him and entranced him and awoke ancestral tom-tomsin his blood. And I waited beside him until the afternoon sunlightgrew thinner and paler and my legs grew tired, for I knew that hishungry little soul was being fed. His eye met mine, when it was allover, but he had nothing to say. I could see, however, that he hadbeen stirred to the depths, --and by a tin mouth-organ and agreasy-sided guitar!

To-night I found Dinkie poring over the pictures in my Knight editionof Shakespeare. He seemed especially impressed, as I stopped andlooked over his shoulder, by a steel engraving of Gérôme's _Death ofCæsar_, where the murdered emperor lies stretched out on the floor ofthe Forum, now all but empty, with the last of the Senators crowdingout through the door. Two of the senatorial chairs are overturned, and Cæsar's throne lies face-down on the dais steps. So Dinkie beganasking questions about a drama which he could not quite comprehend. But they were as nothing to the questions he asked when he turned toanother of the Gérôme pictures, this one being the familiar old_Cleopatra and Cæsar_. He wanted to know why the lady hadn't moreclothes on, and why the big black man was hiding down behind her, andwhat Cæsar was writing a letter for, and why he was looking at thelady the way he did. So, glancing about to make sure that Dinky-Dunkwas within ear-shot, I did my best to explain the situation to littleDinkie. 

"Cæsar, my son, was a man who set out in the world to be a greatconqueror. But when he got quite bald, as you may see by the picture, and had reached middle age, he forgot about being a great conqueror. He even forgot about being so comfortably middle-aged and that it wasnot easy for a man of his years to tumble gracefully into love, forthose romantic impulses, my son, are associated more withirresponsible youth and are apt to be called by rather an ugly namewhen they occur in advanced years. But Cæsar fell in love with thelady you see in the picture, whose name was Cleopatra and who was oneof the greatest man-eaters that ever came out of Egypt. She had aweakness for big strong men, and although certain authorities haveclaimed that she was a small and hairy person with a very uncertaintemper, she undoubtedly set a very good table and made her gentlemenfriends very comfortable, for Cæsar stayed feasting and forgettinghimself for nearly a year with her. It must have been very pleasant, for Cæsar loved power, and intended to be one of the big men of histime. But the lady also loved power, and was undoubtedly glad to seethat she could make Cæsar forget about going home, though it was toobad that he forgot, for always, even after he had lived to write aboutall the great things he had done in the world, people remembered moreabout his rather absurd infatuation for the lady than about all thebattles he had won and all the prizes he had captured. And the lady, of course----"

But I was interrupted at this point. And it was by Dinky-Dunk. 

"Oh, hell!" he said as he flung down his paper and strode out into theother room. And those exits, I remembered, were getting to be a bit ofa habit with my harried old Diddums. 

_Sunday the Fifth_

The Day of Rest seems to be the only day left to me now for mywriting. There are no idlers in the neighborhood of Casa Grande. Thedays are becoming incredibly long, but they still seem over-short forall there is to do. The men are much too busy on the land to givematerial thought to any thing so womanish as a kitchen-garden. So Ihave my own garden to see to. And sometimes I work there until I'malmost ready to drop. On a couple of nights, recently, when it camewatering-time, even these endless evenings had slipped into suchdarkness that I could scarcely see the plants I was so laboriouslyirrigating by hand. It wasn't until the water turned the soil blackthat the growing green stood pallidly out against the mothering darkearth. .. . But it is delightful work. I really love it. And I love tosee things growing. After the bringing up of a family, the bringing upof a garden surely comes next. 

Yet too much work, I find, can make tempers a trifle short. I spokerather sharply to Dinky-Dunk yesterday regarding the folly of leavingfirearms about the house where children can reach them. And he wasequally snappy as he flung his ugly old Colt in its ugly old holsterup over the top corner of our book-cabinet. So, to get even with him, when Dinkie came in with some sort of wide-petaled field-flower andasked if I didn't want my fortune told, I announced I rather fanciedit was pretty well told already. .. . Scotty, by the way, now followsDinkie to school and waits outside and comes loping home with himagain. And my two bairns have a new and highly poetic occupation. Itis that of patiently garnering youthful potato-bugs and squashing theaccumulated harvest between two bricks. 

_Sunday the Twelth_

I have been examining Gershom with a more interested eye. And when hechanged color, under that inspection, I apologized for making himblush. And as that only added to his embarrassment, I artlessly askedhim what a blush really was. That, of course, was throwing the rabbitstraight back into the brier-patch, as far as Gershom was concerned. For he promptly and meticulously informed me that a blush was aminiature epilepsy, a vasomotor impulse leading to the dilation orconstriction of the facial blood-vessels, some psychologists evenclaiming the blush to be a vestigial survival of the prehistoricflight-effort of the heart, coming from the era of marriage bycapture, when to be openly admired meant imminent danger. 

"That isn't a bit pretty, " I told Gershom. "It's as horrid as what myhusband said about handshaking originating in man's desire to be deadsure his gentleman friend didn't have a knife up his sleeve, for usebefore the greeting was over. It would have been so much nicer, Gershom, if you could have told me that the first blush was born onthe same day as the first kiss. "

"Kissing, " that youth solemnly informed me, "was quite unknown toprimitive man. It evolved, in fact, out of the entirelyself-protective practice of smelling, to determine the health of aprospective mate, though this in turn evolved into the ceremonialhabit of the rubbing together of noses, which is still the form ofaffectionate salutation largely prevalent among the natives of theSouth Sea Islands. "

"What a perfectly horrible origin for such a heavenly pastime, " I justas solemnly announced to Gershom, who studied me with a stern andguarded eye, and having partaken of his eleventh flap-jack, escaped tothe stable and the matutinal task of harnessing Calamity Kate. 

_Sunday the Second_

Summer is here, in earnest, and the last few days have been hot andwindless. School is over, for the next eight weeks, and I shall havemy kiddies close beside me. Gershom, after a ten-day trip down toMinneapolis for books and clothes, is going to come back to CasaGrande and help Dinky-Dunk on the land, as long as the holidays last. He thinks it will build him up a bit. He is also solemnly anxious tostudy music. He feels it would round out his accomplishments, which, he acknowledged, have threatened to become overwhelmingly scientific. So I'm to give Gershom music lessons in exchange for his tutoringDinkie. They will be rather awful, I'm afraid, for Gershom has aboutas much music in his honest old soul as Calamity Kate. I may not teachhim much. But all the time, I know, I will be learning a great dealfrom Gershom. He informed me, last night, that he had carefullycomputed that the Bible mentioned nineteen different precious stones, one hundred and four trees or plants, six metals, thirty-fiveanimals, thirty-nine birds, six fishes, twenty insects, and elevenreptiles. 

As I've already said, summer is here. But it doesn't seem to mean asmuch to me as it used to, for my interests have been taken away fromthe land and more and more walled up about my family. Dinky-Dunk'sgrain, however, has come along satisfactorily, and there is everypromise of a good crop. Yet this entirely fails to elate my husband. Every small mischance is a sort of music-cue nowadays to start himsinging about the monotony of prairie-life. Ranching, he protests, isn't the easy game it used to be, now that cattle can't be fattenedon the open range and now that wheat itself is so much lower in price. One has to work for one's money, and watch every dollar. And myDiddums keeps railing about the government doing so little for thefarmer and driving the men off the land into the cities. He has falleninto the habit of protesting he can see nothing much in life as aback-township hay-tosser and that all the big chances are now in thebig centers. I had been hoping that this was a new form ofspring-fever which would eventually work its way out of his system. But I can see now that the matter is something more mental thanphysical. He hasn't lost his strength, but he has lost his drivingpower. He is healthy enough, Heaven knows. Indeed, he impresses me asbeing a bit too much that way, for he has quite lost his old-time leanand hungry look and betrays a tendency to take on a ventral contourunmistakably aldermanic. He may be heavy, but he is hard-muscled andbrown as an old meerschaum. There is a canker, however, somewhereabout the core of his heart. And I can see him more clearly than Iused to. He is a strong man, but he is a strong man withoutearnestness. And being such, I vaguely apprehend in him some splendidfailure. For the wings that soar to success in this world are plumedwith faith and feathered with conviction. 

It did not surprise me this morning when Dinky-Dunk announced that hefelt a trifle stale and suggested that the family take a holiday onTuesday and trek out to Dead-Horse Lake for the day. We're to hitchTumble-Weed and Tithonus to the old prairie-schooner--for we'll betaking side-trails where no car could venture--and pike off for awhole blessed day of care-free picnicking. So to-morrow Struthers andI will be solemnly busy in the kitchen concocting suitable dishes tobe taken along in the old grub-box, and when that is over we'll patchtogether something in the form of bathing-suits, for there'll be achance for a dip in the slough-water, and our kiddies have arrived atan age imposing fit and proper apparel on their sadly pagan butchastened parents. 

_Wednesday the Fifth_

We have had our day at Dead-Horse Lake, but it wasn't the happy eventI had anticipated. Worldly happiness, I begin to feel, usually diesa-borning: it makes me think of wistaria-bloom, for invariably one endis withering away before the other end is even in flower. At any rate, we were off early, the weather was perfect, and the sky was aninverted tureen of lazulite blue. Dinkie drove the team part of theway, his dad smoked beside him up on the big driving-seat, and Iraised my voice in song until Pauline Augusta fell asleep and had tobe bedded down in the wagon-straw and covered with a blanket. 

Dead-Horse Lake is really a slough, dolorously named because a near-byrancher once lost eight horses therein, the foolish animals wanderingout on ice that was too thin to hold them up. 

We were hungry by the time we had hobbled out our teams and gatheredwood and made a fire. And after dinner Dinky-Dunk fell asleep and thechildren and I tried to weave a willow basket, which wasn't asuccess. Poppsy, in fact, cut her finger with her pater's pocket-knifeand because of this physical disability declined to don herbathing-suit when we made ready for the water. 

The slough-water was enticingly warm, under the hot July sun, and weventured in at the west end where a firmer lip of sand and alkali gaveus footing. And I enjoyed the swim, although Dinky-Dunk made fun of myimprovised bathing-suit. It seemed like old times, to bask lazily inthe sun and float about on my back with my fingers linked under myhead. My lord and master even acknowledged that my figure wasn't sobad as he had expected, in a lady of my years. I splashed him forthat, and he dove for my ankles, and nearly drowned me before I couldget away. 

It was all light-hearted enough, until Dinky-Dunk happened to noticethat Dinkie wasn't enjoying the water as an able-bodied youngsterought. The child, in fact, was afraid of it--which was only natural, remembering what a land-bird he had been all his life. His father, apparently, decided to carry him out and give him a swimming-lesson. 

I was on shore by this time, trying to sun out my sodden mop of hair, which I had fondly imagined I could keep dry. I heard Dinkie's cry ashis father captured him, and I called out to Dinky-Dunk, through mycombed out tresses, to have a heart. 

Dinky-Dunk called back that the Indian way, after all, was the onlyway to teach a youngster. I didn't give much thought to the matteruntil the two of them were out in deeper water and I heard Dinkie'sscream of stark terror. It came home to me then that the Indian methodin such things was to toss the child into deep water and leave himthere to struggle for his life. 

Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, hadn't intended to do quite that. But the boywas naturally terrified at being carried out beyond his depth, andwhen I looked up I could see his bony little body struggling to freeitself. That timidity, I take it, angered the boy's father. And heintended to cure it. He was doing his best, in fact, to fling theclutching and clawing little body away from him when I heard thoserepeated short screams of horror and promptly took a hand in thematter. Something snapped in my skull, and I saw red. I hated myhusband for what he was doing. I hated him for the mere thought thathe could do it. And I hated him for calling out that this was whatpeople got by mollycoddling their children. 

But that didn't stop me. I made for Dinky-Dunk like a hundred-weightof wildcats. I went through the water like a hell-diver, and withoutquite knowing what I was doing I got hold of him and tried to garrotehim. I don't remember what I said, but I have a hazy idea it was notthe most ladylike of language. He stared at me, as I tore Dinkie awayfrom him, stared at me with a hard and slightly incredulous eye. ForI'm afraid I was ready to fight with my teeth and nails, if need be, and I suppose my expression wasn't altogether angelic. We were bothshaking, at any rate, when we got back to dry land. Dinky-Dunk stoodstaring at us, for a silent moment or two, with a look of blackdisgust on his wet face. I'm even afraid it was something more thandisgust. Then he strode away and proceeded to dress on the other sideof the prairie-schooner, without so much as a second look at us. Andthen he went off for the horses, absenting himself a quite unnecessarylength of time. But I took advantage of that to have a talk withDinkie. 

"Dinkie, " I said, "you and I are going to walk out into that water, and this time you're not going to be afraid!"

I could see his eye searching mine, although he did not speak. 

I put one hand on the wet tangle of his hair. 

"Will you come?" I asked him. 

He took a deep breath. Then he looked at the slough-water. Then helooked back into my eyes. 

"Yes, " he said, though I noticed his lips were not so red as usual. 

So side by side and hand in hand the two of us walked out intoDead-Horse Lake. His eyes questioned me, once, as the water came upabout his armpits. But he shut his teeth tight and made no effort todraw back. I could see the involuntary spasms of his chest as thatterrifying flood closed in about his little body, yet he was readyenough to show me he wasn't a coward. And when I saw that he had metand faced his ordeal I turned him about and led him quietly back toland. We were both prouder and happier for what had just happened. Wedidn't even need to talk about it, for each knew that the otherunderstood. What still disturbs me, though, is something not in myboy's make-up, but in my own. During the long and silent drive home Inoticed a mark on my husband's neck. And I was the termagant who musthave put it there, though I have no memory of doing so. But from it Irealize that I haven't the control over myself every civilized andself-respecting woman should have. I begin to see that I can'taltogether trust myself where my female-of-the-species affections areinvolved. I'm no better, I'm afraid, than the Bengal tigress whichDinky-Dunk once intimated I was, the Bengal tigress who will battle sounreasoningly for her offspring. It may be natural in mothers, whetherthey wear fur or feathers or lisle-thread stockings--but it worriesme. I was an engine running wild. And when you run wild you are apt torun into catastrophe. 

_Friday the Seventh_

Dinky-Dunk is on his dignity. He has put a fence around himself tokeep me at a distance, the same as he puts a fence around hishaystacks to keep off the cattle. We are coolly polite to each other, but that is as far as it goes. There is something radically wrong withthis home, as a home, but I seem helpless to put the matter right. It's about all I have left, in this life of mine, but I'm in some wayfailing in my duty as a house-wife. "Home" is a beautiful word, andhome-life should be beautiful. Any sacrifice and any concession awoman is willing to make to keep that home, and to keep ugliness outof it, ought to be well considered by the judge of her finaldestinies. I'm ready to do my part, but I don't know where to begin. I'm depressed by a teasing sense of frustration, not quite tangibleenough to fight, like cobwebs across your face. It's not easy to carryaround the milk of human kindness after they've pretty well kicked thebottom out of your can!

Torrid and tiring are these almost endless summer days. But it's whatthe grain needs, and who am I to look this gift-horse of heat in theface. Yet there are two things, I must confess, in which the prairieis sadly lacking. One is trees; and the other is shade, the cool greensun-filtering shade of woodlands where birds can sing and mossy littlebrooks can babble. I've been longing all day for just an hour up in anEnglish cherry tree, with the pectoral smell of the leaves against myface and the chance of eating at least half my own weight of freshfruit. But even in the matter of its treelessness, I'm told, theprairie is reforming. There are men living who remember when therewere no trees west of Brandon, except in the coulées and theriver-bottoms. Now that fire no longer runs wild, however, the treesare creeping in, mile by mile and season by season. Already theeastern line of natural bush country reaches to about ten miles fromRegina two hundred miles west. Oxbow and Estevan, Dinky-Dunk once toldme, had no trees whatever when first settled, though much of thatcountry now has a comfortable array of bluffs. And forestry, ofcourse, is giving nature a friendly push along, in the matter. In themeantime, we have to accommodate ourselves to the conditions thatprevail, just as the birds of the air must do. Here the haughty crowof the east is compelled to nest in the low willows of the coulée andraise its young within hand-reach of mother earth. Like our women, itcan enjoy very little privacy of family life. The only thing thatsaves us and the crows, I suppose, is that the men-folks of thiscountry are too preoccupied with their own ends to go aroundbird-nesting. They are too busy to break up homes, either inwillow-tops or women's hearts. .. . I ought to be satisfied. But I'vebeen dogged, this last day or two, by a longing to be scudding in asingle-sticker off Orienta Point again or to motor-cruise once morealong the Sound in a smother of spray. 

_Thursday the Thirteenth_

Dinky-Dunk has been called to Calgary on business. It sounds simpleenough, in these Unpretentious Annals of an Unloved Worm, but I can'thelp feeling that it marks a trivially significant divide in the trendof things. It depresses me more than I can explain. My depression, Iimagine, comes mostly from the manner in which Duncan went. He wasmatter-of-fact enough about it all, but I can't get rid of theimpression that he went with a feeling very much like relief. Hismanner, at any rate, was not one to invite cross-examination, and heinsisted, to the end, on regarding his departure as an every-dayincident in the life of a preoccupied rancher. So I caught my cue fromhim, and was as quiet about it all as he could have wished. But underthe crust was the volcano. .. . 

The trouble with the tragedies of real life is that they are neverclear-cut. It takes art to weave a selvage about them or fit them intoa frame. But in reality they're as ragged and nebulous aswind-clouds. The days drag on into weeks, and the weeks into months, and life on the surface seems to be running on, the same as before. There's the same superficial play of all the superficial old forces, but in the depths are dangers and uglinesses and sullen bombs ofemotional TNT we daren't even touch!

Heigho! I nearly forgot my _sursum-corda_ rôle. And didn't old DoctorJohnson say that peevishness was the vice of narrow minds? So here'swhere we tighten up the belt a bit. But we humans, who come into theworld alone, and go out of it alone, are always hungering forcompanionship which we can't quite find. Our souls are islands, with acoral-reef of reserve built up about them. Last night, when I waspatching some of Gershom's undies for him, I wickedly worked anarrow-pierced heart, in red yarn, on one leg of his B. V. D. 's. Thismorning, I noticed, his eye evaded mine and there was markedconstraint in his manner. I even begin to detect unmistakable signs ofnervousness in him when we happen to be alone together. And during hislast music lesson there was a _vibrata_ of emotion in his voice whichmade me think of an April frog in a slough-end. 

Even my little Dinkie, day before yesterday, asked me if I'd mind notbathing him any more. He explained that he thought he could managevery nicely by himself now. It seemed trivial enough, and yet, in away, it was momentous. I am to be denied the luxury of tubbing my ownchild. I, who always loved even the smell of that earthy andsoil-grubbing young body, who could love it when it wasn't any tooclean and could glory in its musky and animal-like odors as well asthe satin-shine of the light on its well-soaped little ribs, must nowstand aside before the reservations of sex. It makes me feel that I'vereached still another divide on the continent of motherhood. 

This afternoon, when I wandered into the study, I observed Dinkiestooping over a Chesterfield pillow with his right hand upraised in aperplexingly dramatic manner. He turned scarlet when he saw mestanding there watching him. But the question in my eyes did notescape him. 

"I was pr'tendin' to be King Arthur when he found out Guinevere was inlove with Launcelot, " he rather lamely explained as he walked away tothe window and stood staring out over the prairie. But for the life ofme I can't understand what should have turned his thoughts into thatparticular channel of romance. Those are matters with which the youngand the innocent should have nothing to do. They are matters, in fact, which it behooves even the old and the wary to eschew. 

_Sunday the Sixteenth_

It seems strange, in such golden summer weather, that every man andwoman and child on this sunbathed footstool of God shouldn't be sanelyand supremely happy. .. . My husband, I am glad to say, is once moreback in his home. And I have been realizing, the last few days, thathome is an empty and foolish place without its man about. It's a shipwithout a captain, a clan without a chief. Yet I found it bothdepressing and humbling to be brought once more face to face with thatparticular fact. 

Dinky-Dunk, on the other hand, has come back with both an odd sense ofelation and an odd sense of estrangement. He has taken on a vaguesomething which I find it impossible to define. He is blither and atthe same time he is more solemnly abstracted. And he protests that hisjourney was a success. 

"I'm going to ride two horses, from now on, " he announced to me thismorning. "I've got my chance and I'm going to grab it. I've swappedmy Buckhorn lots for some inside Calgary stuff and I'm lumpingeverything that's left of my Coast deal for a third-interest in thoseBarcona coal-fields. There's a quarter of a million waiting there forthe people with money enough to swing it. And I'm going to edge inwhile it's still open. "

"But is it possible to ride two horses?" I asked, waywardly depressedby all this new-found optimism. 

"It's _got_ to be possible, until we find out which horse is thebetter traveler, " announced Dinky-Dunk. Then he added, without caringto meet my eye: "And I can't say I see much promise of action out ofthis particular end of the team. "

I must have flamed red, at that speech, for I thought at the moment hewas referring to me. It was only after I'd turned the thing over in mymind, as I helped Struthers put together our new butter-worker, that Isaw he really referred to Casa Grande. But my husband knows I willnever part with this ranch. He will never be so foolish as to ask meto do that. Yet one thing is plain. His heart is no longer here. Hewill stick to this prairie farm of ours only for what he can get outof it. 

Dinkie warmed the cockles of my heart by telling me this afternoonwhen we were out salting the horses that he never wanted to go awayfrom Casa Grande and his mummy. The child, I imagine, had overheardsome of this morning's talk. He put his arm around my knees and huggedme tight. And I could see the tawny look come into his hazel eyesspeckled with brown. My Dinkie is a prairie child. His soul is not acramped little soul, but has depth and wideness and undiscernedmysteries. 

_Sunday the Thirtieth_

Two weeks have slipped by. Two weeks have gone, and left no record oftheir going. But a prairie home is a terribly busy one, at times, andit's idleness that leads to the ink-pot. I'm still trying to make thebest of a none too promising situation, and I'll thole through, asWhinstane Sandy puts it. After breakfast this morning, in fact, whenPauline Augusta was swept by one of those little gales of lonesomenessto which children and women are so mysteriously subjected, she climbedup into my lap and I rocked her on my shoulder as I might have rockeda baby. Dinky-Dunk wandered in and inspected that performance with aslightly satiric eye. So, resenting his expression, I promptly beganto sing:

 "Bye-bye, Baby Bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting, To gather up a pile of tin To wrap the Baby Bunting in!"

Dinky-Dunk, when the significance of this lilted flippancy of minehad sunk home, regarded me with a narrowed and none too friendly eye. 

"Feeling a bit larkier than usual this morning, aren't you?" heinquired with what was merely a pretense at carelessness. 

It was merely a pretense, I know, because we'd been over the oldground the night before, and the excursion hadn't added greatly to thehappiness of either of us. Duncan, in fact, had rather horrified me byactually asking if I thought there was a chance of his borrowingeleven thousand dollars from Peter Ketley. 

"We can't all trade on that man's generosity!" I cried, without givingmuch thought to the manner in which I was expressing myself. 

"Oh, _that's_ the way you feel about it!" retorted my husband. And Icould see his face harden into Scotch granite. I could also see thelook of perplexity in my small son's eyes as he stood studying hisfather. 

"Is there anything abnormal in my feeling the way I do?" I parried, resenting the beetling brow of the Dour Man. 

"Not if you regard him as your personal and particular fairygod-father, " retorted my husband. 

"I've no more reason for regarding him as that, " I said as calmly asI could, "than I have for regarding him as a professionalmoney-lender. "

Duncan must have seen from my face that it would be dangerous to gomuch further. So he merely shrugged a flippant shoulder. 

"They tell me he's got more money than he knows what to do with, " hesaid with a heavy jocularity which couldn't quite rise. 

"Then lightening his burdens is a form of charity we can scarcelyafford to indulge in, " I none too graciously remarked. And I saw myhusband's face harden again. 

"Well, I've got to have ready money and I've got to have it before theyear's out, " was his retort. He told me, when the air had cleared alittle, that he'd have to open an office in Calgary as soon asharvesting was over. There was already too much at stake to takechances. Then he asked me if there were any circumstances under whichI'd be willing to sell Casa Grande. And I told him, quite promptly andquite definitely, that there was none. 

"Then how about the old Harris Ranch?" he finally inquired. 

"But why should we sell that?" I asked. Alabama Ranch, I knew, was inmy name, and I had always regarded it as a sort of nest-egg for thechildren. It was something put by for a rainy day, something to fallback on, if ill-luck ever overtook us again. 

"Because I can double and treble every dollar we get out of it, insideof a year, " averred Dinky-Dunk. 

"But how am I to know that?" I contended, hating to seem hard andselfish and narrow in the teeth of an ambitious man's enterprise. 

"You'd have to take my word for it, " retorted my husband. 

"But we've more than ourselves to consider, " I contended, knowing he'dmerely scoff at that harping on the old string of the children. 

"That's why I intend to get out of this rut!" he cried with unexpectedbitterness. And a few minutes later he made the suggestion that he'ddeed Casa Grande entirely over to me if I'd consent to the sale ofAlabama Ranch and give him a chance to swing the bigger plans heintended to swing. 

The suggestion rather took my breath away. My rustic soul, I suppose, is stupidly averse to change. But I realize that when you travel indouble-harness you can't forever pull back on your team-mate. So I'veasked Dinky-Dunk to give me a few days to think the thing over. 

_Wednesday the Second_

Casa Grande has had an invasion of visitors. It was precious old Percyand his Olga who blew in on us, after being swallowed up by the BigSilence for almost four long years. They came without warning, whichis the free and easy way of the westerner, appearing in amud-splattered and dust-covered Ford that had carried them blithelyover two hundred and thirty miles of prairie trails. And with themthey brought a quartet of rampageous young buckaroos who promptlyturned our sedate homestead into a rodeo. 

Percy himself is browner and stouter and more rubicund than I mighthave expected, with just a sprinkling of gray under his lopsidedStetson to announce that Time hasn't been standing still for any ofus. But one would never have taken him for an ex-lunger. And there isa wholesomeness about the man, for all his quietness, which draws oneto him. Olga herself still again impressed me as a Zorn etching cometo life, as a Norse myth in petticoats, with the same old largeness oflimb and the same old suggestion of sky-line vastnesses about her. Shestill looks as though the Lord had made her when the world was youngand the women of Homer did their spinning in the sunlight. Someearlier touch of morning freshness is gone from her, it's true, foryou can't move about with four little toddlers in your wake and stillsuggest the budding vine. But that morning freshness has beensupplanted by a full and mellow noonday contentedness which is notwithout its placid appeal. To her husband, at any rate, she seemsmysteriously perfect. He can still sit and stare at her with astartlingly uxorious eye. And she, in turn, bathes him in that palelunar stare of meditative approval which says plainer than words justhow much her "man" means to her. 

Percy and his family stayed overnight with us and hit the trail againyesterday morning. An old friend of Percy's from Brasenose has taken aparish some forty odd miles south of Buckhorn--a parish, by the way, which ought to shake a little of the Oxford dreaminess out of hissystem--and Olga and her husband are "packing" their newly-arrivedToddler Number Four down to the new curate to have him christened. 

We were all a bit shy and constrained, during our first hour togetherbut this soon wore away. It wasn't long before Olga's offspring andmine were fraternizing together, over-running the bathroom tub andemptying our water-tank, and making a concerted attack on one ofDinky-Dunk's self-binders, which would have been dismantled in shortorder, if Percy hadn't gone out to investigate the cause of the suddenquiet. 

"My boy loves everything with wheels, " explained the proud Olga, inextenuation of her Junior's oil-blackened fingers. 

That brought me up short, for I was on the point of making the samestatement about my Dinkie. After thinking it over, in fact, I realizedthat _every_ normal boy loves everything with wheels. And it began todawn on me that there was nothing so extraordinary, after all, in myson's fondness for machinery. I began to see that he was merely one ofa very wide-spread clan, when, an hour later, the entire excited sixunited in playing Indian about the haystacks, and kept it up untileven the docile Pauline Augusta was driven to revolt against sopersistently being the Pale-face captive. She announced that she wastired of being scalped. So, for variety's sake, the boys turned toriding and roping and hog-tying one another like the true littlewesterners they were, and many an imaginary brand was planted on manya bleating set of ribs. 

But now they are gone, and I've been thinking a great deal about Olga. I fancy I have even been envying her a little. She's of that annealingsoftness which can rivet and hold a family together. I've even beentrying to solace myself with the claim that she's a trifle ox-like inher make-up. But that is not being just to Olga. She makes a perfectwife. She is as tranquil-minded as summer moonlight on a convent-roof. She is as soft-spoken as a wind-harp swinging in an abbey door. Shesurrenders to the will of her husband and neither frets nor questionsnor walks with discontent. I suppose she has a will of her own, packedsomewhere away in that benignant big body of hers, but she neverobtrudes it. She placidly awaits her time, as the bosom of the prairieawaits its harvesting. And I've been wondering if that really isn'tthe best type of woman for married life, the autumnally contented andpensively quiet woman who can remain unruffled by man and hismeanderings. 

I wasn't built according to that plan, and I suppose I've had to payfor it. I've just about concluded, in fact, that I would have been ahard nut for any man to crack. I've never been conspicuous for myefforts at self-obliteration. I've a temper that's as brittle as asquirrel bone. I'm too febrile and flightly, too chameleon-mooded andcritical. The modern wife should be always a conservative. She shouldhold back her husband's impulses of nervous expenditure, conservinghis tranquil-mindedness about the same as cotton-waste in ajournal-box conserves oil. Heaven knows I started with theoriesenough--but I must be a good deal like old Schramm, that teacher ofHeine's who was so busy inditing a study of Universal Peace that hisboys had all the chance they could wish for pummeling one another. ButI've been thinking, Reuben. And I'm going to see if I can't savewhat's left of the ship. I'm no Renaissance cherub on a cloudlet, butI'm going to knuckle down and see if I can't jibe along a littlebetter with my old Dinky-Dunk. I've decided to back off and give himhis chance. If he's set on selling Alabama Ranch, on the terms he'smentioned, I'm not going to object. He's determined to make money, toadvance. And I don't want to see him accusing me of lying down in theshafts!. .. What is more, I'm going out in the fields, when the push ison, to help stook the wheat. That may wear me down and make me alittle more like Olga. 

_Thursday the Tenth_

It's difficult to be a woman, as the over-sensitive Jean Christopheonce remarked. Men are without those confounding emotions which womenseem to be both cursed with and blessed with. When I announced toDinky-Dunk my willingness to part with Alabama Ranch, he took it quiteas a matter of course. He betrayed no tendency to praise me for mysacrifices, for my willingness to surrender to strangers the landwhich had once been our home, the acres on which we'd once been happyand heavy-hearted. He merely remarked that under the circumstances itseemed the most sensible thing to do. There's a one-horse lawyer inBuckhorn who has been asking about the Harris Ranch and Dinky-Dunksays he suspects this inquiring one has a client up his sleeve. 

What I had looked forward to as a talk which might possibly beat downa few of the barriers of reserve between us proved a bit of adisappointment. My husband refused to accept me as a heroine. And onhis way out, as ill-luck would have it, he stopped to observe PaulineAugusta struggling over a letter to her "Uncle Peter. " It was a maideneffort along that line and she was dictating her messages to Dinkie, who, in turn, was laboriously and carefully inscribing them on mywriting-pad, with a nose and a sympathetically working tongue not morethan ten inches away from the paper. Pauline Augusta, in fact, hadjust proclaimed to her amanuensis that "we had a geese for dinnerto-day" when her father stopped to size up the situation. 

"To whom are you describing the home circle?" questioned PaulineAugusta's parent, with an intonation that didn't escape me. 

"It's a letter to Uncle Peter, " explained Dinkie's little sister. AndI could see Duncan's face harden. 

"It's funny my whole family should fall for that damned Quaker!" werethe words he flung over his shoulder at me as he walked out of theroom. 

_Tuesday the Fifth_

School has started again. And it's a solemn business, this matter ofplanting wisdom in little prairie heads. Dinky-Dunk, who has been upto his ears in haying and is now watching his grain with a nervouseye, remarked that our offspring would be once more mingling withMennonites and Swedes and Galicians and Ukrainians. I resented thatspeech, though I said nothing in reply to it. But I decided toinvestigate Gershom's school. 

So yesterday afternoon I drove over in the car. I had a blow-out onthe way, a blow-out which I had to patch up with my own hands, so Iarrived too late to inspect Gershom conducting his classes. It wasalmost four, in fact, before I got there, so I pulled up beside theschool-gate and sat waiting for the children to come out. And as I satthere in the car-seat, under a sky of unimaginable blue, with theprairie wind whipping my face, I couldn't help studying that baldlittle temple of learning which stood out so clear-cut in the sharpnorthern sunlight. It was a plain little frame building set in onecorner of a rancher's half-section, an acre of land marked off by awire fence where the two trails crossed, the two long trails thatmelted away in the interminable distance. It seemed a lonely littlehouse of scholarship, with its playground worn so bare that even twomonths of idleness had given scant harborage for the seeds that windand bird must have brought there. But as I stared at it it seemed totake on a dignity all its own, the dignity of a fixed and far-offpurpose. It was the nest of a nation's greatness. It was the outpostof civilization. It was the advance-guard of pioneering man, drivingthe wilderness deeper and deeper into the North. It was life preparingwistfully for the future. 

From it I heard a sudden shrill chorus of voices and the clatter offeet, and I knew that the day's work was over. I saw the childrenemerge, like bees out of a beehive, and loneliness no longer reignedover that bald yard in the betraying northern sunlight. Yet they werenot riotous, those children confronting the wine-like air of the open. They were more subdued than I had looked for, since I could only tooeasily remember one of my earlier calls for Dinkie at noon, when Ifound the entire class turned out and riding a rancher's pig, a heavybrood-sow that had in some luckless moment wandered into theschool-yard and had been chased and raced until it was too weary toresent a young barbarian mounting its broad back and riding thereon, to the shouts of the other boys and the shrill cries of the girls. Butnow, from my car-seat, I could see Gershom surrounded by amulti-colored group of little figures, as he stopped to fix astrap-buckle on the school-bag of one of his pupils. And as he stoodthere in the slanting afternoon sunlight surrounded by his charges hesuddenly made me think of the tall old priest in Sorolla's _TristeHerencia_ surrounded by his waifs. I caught the echo of somethingbenignant and Lincoln-like from that raw-boned figure in thebig-lensed eye-glasses and the clothes that didn't quite fit him. Andmy respect for Gershom went up like a Chinook-fanned thermometer. Hetook those children of his seriously. He liked them. He was trying togive them the best that was in him. And that solemn purpose saved him, redeemed him, ennobled his baldness just as it ennobled the baldnessof the four-square little frame building behind him. I don't know whyit was, but for some reason or other that picture of the northernprairie and the gaunt school-teacher surrounded by his pupils in thethinning afternoon sunlight became memorable to me. It photographeditself on my mind, not sharply, but softened with a fringing prism offeeling, like a picture taken with what camera-men call a"soft-focus. " It touched my heart, in some way, and threatened tobring a choke up into my foolish old throat. 

It was Pauline Augusta who saw me first. She came toward the car withher strapped school-books and her lunch-box in her hand and a primlittle smile on her slightly freckled face. She impressed me as astartingly shabby figure, in the old sealskin coat which I had madeover for her, worn clean to the hide along the front, for even thoseearly autumn days found a chill in the air when the sun began to getlow. She had just climbed in beside me when I caught sight of Dinkie. I saw him come down the school-steps, stuffing something into thepocket of his reefer-jacket as he came. He looked startlingly tall, for a boy of his years. He seemed deep in thought. There was, indeed, an air of remoteness about him which for a moment rather startled me, an air of belonging, not to me, but to the world into which he waspeering with such ardent young eyes. Then he caught sight of me, andat the same moment his face both lightened and brightened. He cametoward the car quietly, none the less, and with that slightly sidewisetwist of the body which overtakes him in his occasional moments ofembarrassment, for it was plain that he stood averse to any unduedisplay of emotion before his playmates. He merely said, "Hello, Mummy" and smiled awkwardly. But after he had climbed up into the carand wormed down between Pauline Augusta and me, and after I had tuckedthe old bear-robe about them and called out to Gershom that I'd carrymy kiddies home, I could feel Dinkie's arm push shyly in behind myback and work its way as far around my waist as it was able to reach. He didn't speak. But his solemn little face gazed up at me, with itshabitual hungry look, and I could see the hazel specks in the browniris of the upturned eye as the arm tightened its hold on me. It mademe ridiculously happy. For I knew that my boy loved me. And I lovehim. I love him so much that it brings a tapering spear-head of paininto my heart, and at the very moment I'm so happy I feel a tear justunder the surface. 

_Sunday the Tenth_

I have been reading Peter's latest letter to Dinkie, reading it forthe second time. It is not so frolicsome as many of its fellows, butit impresses me as typical of its sender. 

 "I've to-day told fourteen cents' worth of postage-stamps to carry out to you, dear Dinkie, a copy of my own _Tales from Homer_, which may be muddy with a few big words but which the next year or two will surely see tramped down into easier going. You may not like it now, but later on, I know, you will like it better. For it tells of heroes and battles and travels which only a boy can really understand. It tells of the wanderings and adventures of strong and simple-hearted men, men who are as scarce, nowadays, as the shining helmets they used to wear. It tells of women superb and simple and lovely as goddesses, such as your own prairie might give birth to, such as your own mother must always seem to us. It tells of flashing temples and cities of marble overlooking singing seas of sapphire, of stately ships venturing over dark waters and landing on unknown islands, of siege and sword-fights and caves and giants and sea-goddesses and magic songs, and all that sunnier and simpler life which the world, as a prosaic old grown-up, has left behind. .. . 

 "But I'm wrong in this, perhaps, for out in the land where you live there is still largeness and the gold-green ache of wonder beyond every sky-line. And I can't help envying you, Dinkie, for being a part of that world which is so much more heroic than mine. I live where a very shabby line of horse-cars used to run; and you live where the buffaloes used to run. I hear the rattle of the ash-cans in the morning; and you hear the song of the wind playing on the harp of summer. I pay five hundred dollars a year to wander about a smoky club no bigger than your corral; you wander about a Big Outdoors that rambles off up to the Arctic Circle itself. And you open a window at night and see the Aurora Borealis in all its beauty; and I open mine and observe an electric roof-sign announcing that Somebody's Tonic will take away my tired feeling. You put up your blind and see God's footstool bright with dew and dizzy with distance; I put up mine and overlook a wall of brick and mortar with one window wherein a fat man shaves himself. And you can go out in the morning and pick yellow crowfoot and range lilies; and all we can pick about this place of ours are milk-bottles and morning-papers packed full of murder and theft and tax-notices!"

Much of that letter, I know, was over Dinkie's head. But it carried amessage or two to Dinkie's mother which in some way threw her heartinto high. It was different from the letter that came the weekbefore, the one arriving two days ahead of Kingsley's _Water Babies_with six lines of Hagedorn inscribed on its fly-leaf:

 "And here you are to live, and help us live. Bend close and listen, bird with folded wings. Here is life's secret: Keep the upward glance; Remember Aries is your relative, The Moon's your uncle, and those twinkling things Your sisters and your cousins and your aunts!"

This letter seemed like the Peter Ketley we knew best, the sad-eyedPeter with the feather of courage in his cap, the Peter who couldcaper and make you forget that his heart had ever been heavy. For hewrote:

 "This time, Dinkie-Boy, I'm going to tell you about the sea. For the water-tank, as I remember it, is the biggest sea you have at Casa Grande--unless you count the mud when winter breaks up! And your prairie, with its long waves of green, is, I suppose, really a sea that has gone to sleep. But I mean the truly honest-to-goodness sea which has tides and baby-whales and steamers and cramps and sea-serpents in it. You saw it once at Santa Monica, I know, though you may have been too small to remember. But yesterday, I motored to a place called Atlantic City where they sell picture post-cards and push you in a wheeled chair and let you sit on the sand and watch the Water Babies, whom the policemen send to jail if they so much as walk along the beach without their stockings on. These Water Babies were not in a bottle--like the ones you'll read about in the book--but I think there was a bottle or two in some of them, from the way they acted. But one of them was in a pickle, for Father Neptune caught her in his under-tow--which you must not mix up with his under-toe, something with which only the mermaids are familiar--and a life-guard had to swim out and bring her in. And a few minutes after that I saw a real beach-comber. I had read about them in the South Sea Islands, but had never seen one before. This one sat under a striped parasol, with a mirror between her knees, and combed and combed her hair until it was quite dry again. I was disappointed in her knees, because I was hoping, at first, she wouldn't have any, but would be a mermaid who had come up on the sand to sun herself and would have a long and tapering tail covered with scales like a tarpon's. But all she had was beach-shoes tied with silk ribbons, and I preferred watching the water. For when I watch the ocean I always feel like Mr. Hood and wish I was at least three small boys, so that I could pull off my three pairs of shoes and stockings and go paddling up to my six bare knees and let the rollers slap against my three startled little tummies and have thirty toes to step on the squids and star-fish with. And when I went back to the board-walk and watched all the gulls (I don't think I ever saw so many of 'em in one place at once) I couldn't help thinking it was too bad the Pilgrim Fathers didn't wait for three centuries and land at a bright and lively place like this, since it would have made them so much jollier and fizzier. They'd probably have turned the _Mayflower_ into a diving-float and we'd never have had any Blue Laws to break and that curious thing known as The New England Conscience to keep us from being as happy as we feel we ought to be. "

_Sunday the Twenty-Fourth_

Harvest is on us, and Casa Grande hums like a beehive. There are threeextra "hands" to feed, and Whinnie is going about with a moody eyebecause Struthers is directing more attention than necessary towardone of the smooth-spoken cutthroats now nesting in our bunk-house. Hisname is Cuba Sebeck and in times of peace he professes to be ahorse-wrangler. Struthers, intent on showing Whinnie that he is notthe only man in her world, is placidly but patiently showering thelanky Cuba with a barrage of her fluffiest pastries. She has alsogiven her hair an extra strong wash of sage-tea, which is Struthers'pet and particular way of putting on war-paint. Whinnie, I notice, shuts himself up after supper with that copy of Burns' poems we gavehim last Christmas, morosely exiling himself from all the laughing andgaming and pow-wowing which takes place in the long cool twilights, just outside the bunk-house. Cuba undertook to serenade the dour oneby donning certain portions of Struthers' apparel and playing my oldbanjo under his window. Whinnie quietly retaliated by emptying hisbath-water on the musician's head--and the language was indescribable. I have been forced to speak to Dinky-Dunk, in fact, about the men'sprofanity before my children. It is something I will not endure. Myhusband, on the other hand, refuses to take the matter very seriously. But I have been keeping a close eye over my kiddies--and woe betidethe horse-wrangler who uses unseemly language within their hearing. Sofar they seem to have gone through it unscathed, about the same as achild can go through the indecorous moments of _The Arabian Nights_, which stands profoundly wicked to only Arabs and old gentlemen. 

_Wednesday the Twenty-Eighth_

Summer is slipping away. The days are shortening and there have beenlight frosts at night, but not enough to hurt Dinky-Dunk's late oats, which he has been watching with a worried eye. There is a saber-bladeedge to the evening air now and we have been having some gloriousdisplays of Northern Lights. I can't help feeling that these MerryDancers of the Pole, as some one has called them, make up for what theprairie may lack in diversity. Dusk by dusk they drown our world incolor, they smother our skies in glory. They are terrifying, sometimes, to the tenderfoot, giving him the feeling that his world ison fire. Poor old Struthers, during an especially active display, invariably gets out her Bible. Used to them as I am, I find they canstill touch me with awe. They make me lonesome. They seem like thesearch-lights of God, showing up my human littlenesses of soul. Theyare Armadas of floating glory reminding me there are seas I can nevertraverse. And the farther north one goes, of course, the moremagnificent the displays. 

Last night we watched the auroral bands gather and grow in a coldgreen sky, straight to the north of us, and then waver and deepenuntil they reached the very zenith, where they hung, swaying curtainsof fire. No wonder the redskins call that wild pageantry of color theghost-dance of their gods. Even as we watched them, opal and gold androse and orange and green, we could see them come wheeling down on ourlittle world like an army of angels with incandescent swords. It madeone imagine that the very heavens were aflame, going up in quiveringveils of white and red and green. And when it was over I listened to along argument about the Aurora Borealis, or the Aurora Polaris, asGershom insisted it should be called. 

Dinky-Dunk contended that one could _hear_ these Northern Lightsoverhead, on a clear night. He described the sound as sometimes afaint crackling, like that of a comb drawn through your hair, andsometimes as a soft rustling noise, like the rustling of a silkpetticoat heard through a closed door, coming closer and closer as thedisplay wavered farther and farther toward the south. 

Gershom was disposed to dispute this, so our old Klondiker, WhinstaneSandy, was called in to give evidence. He did so promptly andpositively, saying he'd heard the Lights many a night in the FarNorth. Gershom is still unconvinced, but intends to look up hisauthorities on the matter. He attributes them to sun-spots and assertsit's a well-known fact they often put the telephone and telegraphwires out of commission. He has proposed that we sit up and study themsome night, through his telescope, which he is disinterring from thebottom of his trunk. .. . 

My lord and master is going about with a less clouded eye, for he hassucceeded in selling the Harris Ranch, and selling it for thirty-fivehundred dollars more than he had expected. It is to go, eventually, tosome tenderfoot out of the East, to some tenderfoot who can have verylittle definite knowledge of land-values in this jumping-off place onthe edge of the world. But may that tenderfoot, whoever he is, behappy in his new home! Dinky-Dunk is now forever figuring up what hewill get for his grain. He's preoccupied with his plans for branchingout in the business world. His heart is no longer in his work here. Isometimes feel that we're all merely accidents in his life. And thatfeeling leaves me with a heart so heavy that I have to keep busy, orI'd fall to luxuriating in that self-pity which is good for neitherman nor beast. 

Yet Dinky-Dunk is not all hardness. He surprises me, now and then, bydisturbing little gestures of boyishness. He announced to me the othernight that the only way to get any use out of a worn-out husband wasto revamp him, with the accent on the vamp. I understood what hemeant, and I think I actually changed color a trifle. But I know ofnothing more desolating than trying to make love to a man eitheragainst his will or against your own will. It would be a terriblething to have him tell you there was no longer any kick in yourkisses. So I remain on my dignity. I am companionable, and nothingmore. When we were saying good-by, the last time he went off to thecity, and he looked up at my perfunctory and quite meaningless peck onhis cheek, I felt myself blushing before his quiet and half-quizzicalstare. Then he laughed a little as he turned away and pulled on hisgauntlets. "The sweeter the champagne, I suppose, the colder it shouldbe served!" he rather cryptically remarked as he climbed into thewaiting car. And yesterday he let his soul emerge from its tent ofreticence when he climbed up on the wagon-box to stare out over hissea of all but ripened wheat. "Come, money!" he said, with his armsstretched out before him. Now, that was a trick which he had caughtfrom my little Dinkie. I don't know how or where the boy first pickedup the habit, but when he particularly wants something he standssolemnly out in the open, with his two little arms outstretched, asthough he were supplicating Heaven itself, and says "Come, jack-knife!" or "Come, jelly-roll!" or "Come, rain!" according to hisparticular desires of the particular moment. I think he really caughtit from an illustration in _The Arabian Nights_, from the picture ofCassim grandiloquently proclaiming "Open Sesame!" He is an imaginativelittle beggar. "Mummy, " he said to me the other night, "see all themoonlight that's been spilled on the grass!" But children are madethat way. Even my sage little Poppsy, when a marigold-leaf fell in thebowl of our solitary gold-fish, cried out to me: "See, Mummy, our fishhas had a baby!" Sex is still an enigma to her, as much an enigma asit was away last spring when, not being quite sure whether her newkitten was a little boy-cat or a little girl-cat, she sagaciouslychristened it "Willie-Alice. " And a few weeks later, when theunmistakable appearance of tail-feathers finally persuaded even heroptimistic young heart that the two chicks which had been bequeathedto her were dishearteningly masculine in their tendencies, sheofficially re-christened the apostate "Elaine" and "Rowena, " andthereafter solemnly accepted them as "Archie" and "Albert. " And whilespeaking of this mysteriously ramifying factor of sex, I am compelledto acknowledge that I encountered a rather disturbing littleback-flare of Freudian hell-fire only a couple of evenings ago. Ittook my thoughts galloping back to the time in our post-nuptial erawhen Dinky-Dunk went Berserker and chased me around the haystacks withmy hair flying. I'd taken Dinkie upon my lap, and, without quiteknowing it, sat stroking his frowsy young head. My thoughts, in fact, were a thousand miles away. Then, still without giving much attentionto what I was doing, I squeezed that warm little body up close againstmy own. I was astounded, the next moment, to see my small offspringturn on me with all the lusty fierceness of the cave man. He got hisarms about me and buried his face in my neck and kissed me as nogentleman, big or little, should ever kiss a lady. His small body wasshaken with a subliminal and quite unexpected gust of feeling, justas I've seen a June-time garden shaken by an unexpected gust of wind. It passed away, of course, about as quickly as it came--but with itwent a scattering of the white petals of childhood unconcern. 

I don't suppose my poor little Dinkie has yet awakened to the factthat his body is a worn river-bed down which must race the freshets offar-off racial instincts. But the thing disturbed me more than I'd bewilling to admit. There are murky corridors in the house of life. Theystand there, and they must be faced. There are rooms where the airmust be kept stirring, corners into which the clear sanity of sunlightmust be thrown. Dinkie, since he has stepped into his first experiencein the keeping of rabbits, has been asking me a number of ratherdisconcerting questions. His father, I notice, has the habit ofhalf-diffidently referring the boy to me, just as I nursed the earlierhabit of referring him to his father. But some time soon Dinkie and Iwill have to have a serious talk about this thing called Life, thisLife which is so much more uncompromisingly brutal than the child-mindcan conceive. .. . 

By the way, there's a lot of nonsense talked about motherhoodsoftening women. It may soften them in some ways, but there are manyothers in which it hardens them. It draws their power of love togetherinto a fixed point, just as the lens of a burning-glass concentratesthe vague warmth of the sun into one small and fiercely illuminatedarea. It is a form of selfishness, I suppose, but it is a selfishnessnature imposes upon us. And it is sanctified by the end it serves. Atevery turn, now, I find that I am thinking of my children. I seem tohave my eyes set steadily on something far, far ahead. I'm not quitecertain just what this something is. It's a sort of secret between meand the Master of Life. But the memory of it makes my days moreendurable. It allows me to face the future without a quaver of regret. I am a woman, and I am no longer young. But it gives me courage tolaugh in the teeth of Time. 

And to laugh, to laugh whatever happens--that is the great thing! Itisn't age I dread. But I'd hate to lose that lightness with whichthose blessed ones we call the young can move through the world, thatself-renewing freshness which converts every daybreak into a dewy newworld and mints every sunrise into a brand new life . .. I askedGershom to-day if he could possibly tell me how many Parker Houserolls a square mile of wheat running forty bushels to the acre wouldmake. And he surprised me by inquiring how many quarts of buttermilkit would take to shingle a cow. Gershom is widening out a bit. .. . 

Dinkie, I notice, has just compiled a list of horses. I read from hiscarefully ruled half-page:

"Draght horses; carriege horses; riding horses; racing horses;ponyies; percheron from france; Belgain from Beljium; shire clyesdaleand saffold punch from great Britain; french coach and German coach;contucky saddle horses; through-breads; Shetland ponies; mushstandponies; pacers and pintoes. " Thus recordeth my Toddler. 

_Sunday the Ninth_

I have had Dinkie in bed for the last five days, with a bruised foot. Duncan shortened the stirrups and put the boy on Briquette, who hadjust proved a handful for even an old horse-wrangler like Cuba Sebeck. Briquette bucked and threw the boy. And Dinkie, in the mix-up, got ahoof-pound on the ankle. No bones were broken, luckily, but the footwas very sore and swollen for a few days. No word about the episodehas passed between Duncan and me. But I'm glad, all things considered, that I was not a witness of the accident. The clouds are already quiteheavy enough over Casa Grande. 

Dinkie and his mater, however, have been drawn much closer togetherduring the last few days. I've talked to him, and read to him, andwithout either of us being altogether conscious of it there has beenan opening of a closed door or two. Dinkie loves to be read to. Thenew world of the imagination is just opening up to him. And I envy therapture of the child in books, rapture not yet spoiled by theintellectual conceit of the grown-up. 

But I'm not the only reader about this ranch. I'm afraid the copy ofBurns which Santa Claus brought to Whinstane Sandy last Christmas isnot adding to his matrimonial tendencies as love-plaints of thatnature should. At noon, as soon as dinner is over, he sits on the backstep, poring over his beloved Tammas. And at night, now that theevenings are chillier, he retreats to the bunk-house stove, where hesmokes and reads aloud. His own mother, he tells me, used to say manyof those pieces to him when he was a wee laddie. He both outraged andangered poor Struthers, last Sunday, by reading _Tam O'Shanter_ aloudto her. That autumnal vestal proclaimed that it was anything butsuitable literature for an old philanderer who still saw fit to livealone. It showed, she averred, a shocking lack of respect forwomen-folk and should be taken over by the police. 

Struthers even begins to suspect that this much-thumbed volume ofBurns lies at the root of Whinnie's accumulating misanthropy. She hasasked me if I thought a volume of Mrs. Hemans would be of service inleading the deluded old misogynist back to the light. The matter hasbecome a more urgent one since Cuba Sebeck suffered a severe biliousattack and a consequent sea-change in his affections. But I'm afraidour Whinnie is too old a bird to be trapped by printer's ink. Inotice, in fact, that Struthers is once more spending her evenings inknitting winter socks. And I have a shadow of a suspicion that theyare for the obdurate one. 

My Dinkie, by the way, has written his first poem, or, rather, hisfirst two poems. The first one he slipped folded into my sewing-basketand I found it when I was looking for new buttons for PaulineAugusta's red sweater. It reads:

 No more we smel the sweet clover, Floting on the breeze all over. But now we hear the wild geese calling; And lissen, tis the grey owl yowling. 

The second one, however, was a more ambitious effort. He worked overit, propped up in bed, for an hour or two. Then, having looked uponhis work and having seen that it was good, he blushingly passed itover to me. So I went to the window and read it. 

 O blue-bird, happy robbin-- Who teached those birds to stick theirselves together? Who teached them how to put their tails on? Who teached them how to hold tight on the tree tops? Who gived them all the fetthers on their brest? Who gived them all the eggs with little birdies in them? Who teached them how to make the shells so blue? Who teached them how to com home in the dark? Twas God. Twas God. He teached him!

I read it over slowly, with a crazy fluttering of the heart which Icould never explain. They were so trivial, those little halting lines, and yet so momentous to me! It was life seeking expression, lifegroping so mysteriously toward music. It was man emerging out of thedusk of time. It was Rodin's _Penseur_, not in grim and statelybronze, but in a soft-eyed and white-bodied child, groping hisstumbling way toward the border-land of consciousness, staring out ona new world and finding it wonderful. It was my Little Stumbler, myPrecious Piece-of-Life, walking with his arm first linked through thearm of Mystery. It was my Dinkie looking over the rampart of thehome-nest and breaking lark-like into song. 

I went back to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, and took myman-child in my arms. 

"It's wonderful, Dinkie, " I said, trying to hide the tears I was soashamed of. "It's so wonderful, my boy, that I'm going to keep it withme, always, as long as I live. And some day, when you are a greatman, and all the world is at your feet, I'm going to bring it to youand show it to you. For I know now that you are going to be a greatman, and that your old mother is going to live to be so proud of youit'll make her heart ache with joy!"

He hugged me close, in a little back-wash of rapture, and then settleddown on his pillows. 

"I could do better ones than that, " he finally said, with a glowingeye. 

"Yes, " I agreed. "They'll be better and better. And that'll make yourold Mummsy prouder and prouder!"

He lay silent for several minutes. Then he looked at the square ofpaper which I held folded in my hand. 

"I'd like to send it to Uncle Peter, " he rather startled me bysaying. 

_Saturday the Twenty-Ninth_

Once more I'm a grass widow. My Duncan is awa'. He scooted for Calgaryas soon as his threshing-work was finished up. But that tumult is overand once more I've a chance to sit down and commune with my soul. Everything here is over-running with wheat. Our bins are bursting. Thelord of the realm is secretly delighted, but he has said little aboutit. He has a narrow course to steer. He is grateful for the money thatthis wheat will bring in to him, yet he can see it would never do toharp too loudly on the productiveness of our land--on _my_ land, Iought to say, for Casa Grande has now been formally deeded to me. Ifind no sense of triumph, however, in that transfer. I am depressed, in fact, at the very thought of it. It seems to carry a vague air ofthe valedictory. But I refuse to be intimidated by the future. 

Gershom and I, indeed, have been indulging in the study of astronomy. The air was crystal clear last night, so that solemn youth suggestedthat we take out the old telescope and study the stars. Which we did. And which was much more wonderful than I had imagined. But Gershom hadno reflector, so after getting a neck-ache trying to inspect theheavens while on our feet we took the old buffalo-robe and a couple ofrugs out to a straw-pile that had been hauled in to protect our winterperennials. There we indecorously reposed on our backs and wentstargazing in comfort. And Gershom even forgot that painfulbashfulness of his when he fell to talking about the planets. Heslipped out of his shell and spoke with genuine feeling. 

He suggested that we begin with the Big Dipper, which I could locateeasily enough well up in the northern sky. That, Gershom told me, wassometimes called the Great Bear, though it was only a part of the real_Ursa Major_ of the astronomers. Then he showed me Benetnasch at theend of the Dipper's handle, and Mizar at the bend in the handle, thenAlioth, and then Megrez, which joins the handle to the bowl. Then heshowed me Phaed and Merak, which mark the bottom of the bowl, and thenDubhe at the bowl's outer rim. 

I tried hard, but I was very stupid about getting the names right. Then Gershom asked me to look up at Mizar, and see if I could makeout a small star quite close to it. I did so, without much trouble, and Gershom thereupon condescended to admit that I had exceptionallygood eyes. For that star, he explained, was Alcor, and Alcor wasArabic for "the proof, " and for centuries and centuries the ability tosee that star had been accepted as the proof of good vision. 

Then Gershom went on to the other constellations, and talked of sunsof the first and second magnitude, and pointed out Sirius, in whosehonor great temples had once been built in Egypt, and Arcturus, thesame old Arcturus that a Hebrew poet by the name of Job had sungabout, and Vega and Capella and Rigel, which he said sent out eightthousand times more light than our sun, and is at least thirty-fourthousand times as big. 

But it only made me dizzy and staggered my mind. I couldn't comprehendthe distances he was talking about. I just couldn't make it, any morethan a bronco that had been used to jumping a six-barred gate couldvault over a windmill tower. And I had to tell Gershom that it didn'tdo a bit of good informing me that Sirius was comparatively close tous, as it stood only nine light-years away. I remembered how he hadexplained that light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand milesa second, and that there are thirty million seconds in a year, so thata light-year is about five and a half million million of miles. Butwhen he started to tell me that some of the so-called photographicstars are thirty-two thousand light-years away from us my imaginationjust curled up and died. It didn't mean anything to me. It couldn't. Itried in vain to project my puny little soul through all that space. At first it was rather bewildering. Then it grew into somethingtouched with grandeur. Then it took on an aspect of awfulness. Andfrom that it grew into a sort of ghastliness, until the machinery ofthe mind choked and balked and stopped working altogether, like anoverloaded motor. I had to reach out in the cold air and catch hold ofGershom's arm. I felt a hunger to cling to something warm and human. 

"We call this world of ours a pretty big world, " Gershom was saying. "But look at Betelgeuse up there, which Michelson has been able tomeasure. He has, at least, succeeded in measuring the angle at the eyethat Betelgeuse subtends, so that after estimating its parallax asgiven by a heliometer, it's merely a matter of trigonometry to workout the size of the star. And he estimated Betelgeuse to be twohundred and sixty million miles in diameter. That means it would taketwenty-seven million of our suns to equal it in bulk. So that this bigworld of ours, which takes so many weeks to crawl about on the fastestships and the fastest trains, is really a mote of dust, somethingsmaller than the smallest pin-prick, compared to that far-away sun upthere on the shoulder of Orion!"

"Stop!" I cried. "You're positively giving me a chill up my spine. You're making me feel so lonesome, Gershom, that you're giving megoose-flesh. You're not leaving me anything to get hold of. Youhaven't even left me anything to stand on. I'm only a little speck ofNothing on a nit of a world in a puny little universe which is only alittle freckle on the face of some greater universe which is only alost child in a city of bigger constellations which in turn have stilllonelier suns to swing about, until I go on and on, and wonder with agasp what is beyond the end of space. But I can't go on thinking aboutit. I simply can't. It upsets me, the same as an earthquake would, when you look about for something solid and find that even your solidold earth is going back on you!"

"On the contrary, " said Gershom as he put down his telescope, "I knownothing more conducive to serenity than the study of astronomy. It hasa tendency to teach you, in the first place, just how insignificantyou are in the general scheme of things. The naked eye, in clear airlike this, can see over eight thousand stars. The larger telescopesreveal a hundred million stars, and the photographic dry-plate hasshown that there are several thousands of millions which can bedefinitely recorded. So that you and I are not altogether the wholeworks. And to remember that, when we are feeling a bit important, isgood for our Ego!"

I didn't answer him, for I was busy just then studying the Milky Way. And I couldn't help feeling that it must have been on a night likethis that a certain young shepherd watching his flocks on the uplandsof Canaan sat studying the infinite stairways of star-dust that"sloped through darkness up to God" and was moved to say: "When Iconsider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the starswhich Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, orthe son of man that Thou visitest him?"

"Yes, Gershom, it's horribly humiliating, " I said as I squinted up atthose serene heavens. "They last forever. And we come and go out, andnobody knows why!"

"Pardon me, " corrected the literal-minded Gershom. "They do not lastforever. They come and go out, just as we do. Only they take longer. Consider the Dipper up there, for instance. A hundred thousand yearsfrom now that Dipper will be perceptibly altered, for we know thelateral movement of Dubhe and Benetnasch will give the outer line ofthe bowl a greater flare and make the crook of the handle a triflesharper. Even a thousand years would show change enough forinstruments to detect. And a million years will probably show thegroup pretty well broken up. But the one regrettable feature, ofcourse, is that we will not be here to see it. "

"Where will we be?" I asked Gershom. 

"I don't know, " he finally admitted, after an unexpectedly longsilence. 

"But will it all go on, forever and forever and forever?"

"To do so is not in the nature of things, " was Gershom's quiet-tonedreply. "It is the destiny of our own earth, of course, which mostinterests us. And however we look at it, that destiny is a gloomyone. Its heat may fail. Stupart, in fact, has established that itstemperature is going down one and a half degrees every thousand years. Or its volcanic elevating forces may give out, so that the land willsubside and the water wash over it from pole to pole. Or a comet maywipe up its atmosphere, the same as one sponge-sweep wipes up moisturefrom a slate. Or the sun itself may cool, so that the last of our racewill stand huddled together in a solarium somewhere on the Equator. Oras our sun rushes toward Lyra, it may bump into a derelict sun, justas a ship bumps into a wreck. If that derelict were as big as our sun, astronomers would see it at least fifteen years before the collision. For five or six years it would even be visible to the naked eye, sothat the race, or what remained of the race, would have plenty of timeto think things over and put its house in order. Then, of course, we'dgo up like a singed feather. And there'd be no more breakfasts toworry over, and no more wheat to thresh, and no more school fires tostart in the morning, and no more children to make think you know morethan you really do, and not even any more hearts to ache. There wouldbe just Emptiness, just voiceless and never-ending Nothingness!"

Gershom stopped speaking and sat staring up at Orion. Then he turnedand looked at me. 

"What's the matter?" he asked, for he must have felt my shiver underthe robe. 

"Nothing, " I said in a thin and pallid voice. "Only I think I'll goback to the house. And I'm going to make a pot of good hot cocoa!" . .. And that's mostly what life is: making little pots of cocoa to keepour bodies warm in the midst of a never-ending chilliness!

_Tuesday the Eighth_

My husband is home again. He came back with the first blizzard of thewinter and had a hard time getting through to Casa Grande. This giveshim all the excuses he could desire for railing at prairie life. Itold him, after patiently listening to him cussing about everything insight, that it was plain to see that he belonged to the land of thebeaver. He promptly requested to know what I meant by that. 

"Doesn't the beaver regard it as necessary to dam his home before heconsiders it fit to live in?" I retorted. But Duncan, in thatestranging new mood of his, didn't relax a line. He even announced, alittle later on, that a quick-silver wit might be all right if itcould be kept from running over. And it was my turn to ask if he hadany particular reference to allusions. 

"Well, for one thing, " he told me, "there's this tiresome habit ofhitching nicknames on to everything in sight. "

I asked him what names he objected to. 

"To begin right at home, " he retorted, "I regard 'Dinkie' as anespecially silly name for a big hulk of a boy. I think it's about timethat youngster was called by his proper name. "

I'd never thought about it, to tell the truth. His real name, Iremembered, was Elmer Duncan McKail. That endearing diminutive of"Dinkie" had stuck to him from his baby days, and in my fond andfoolish eyes, of course, had always seemed to fit him. But evenGershom had spoken to me on the matter, months before, asking me if Ipreferred the boy to be known as "Dinkie" to his school mates. And I'dtold Gershom that I didn't believe we could get rid of the "Dinkie" ifwe wanted to. His father, I knew, had once objected to "Duncan, " as hehad no liking to be dubbed "Old Duncan" while his offspring wouldanswer to "Young Duncan. " And "Duncan, " as a name, had never greatlyappealed to me. But it is plain now that I have been remiss in thematter. So hereafter we'll have to make an effort to have our littleDinkie known as Elmer. It's like bringing a new child into the familycircle, a new child we're not quite acquainted with. But these things, I suppose, have to be faced. So hereafter my laddie shall officiallybe known as "Elmer, " Elmer Duncan McKail. And I have started the ballrolling by duly inscribing in his new books "Elmer D. McKail" andrequesting Gershom to address his pupil as "Elmer. "

I've been wondering, in the meantime, if Duncan is going to insist ona revision of all our ranch names, the names so tangled up with loveand good-natured laughter and memories of the past. Take our horsesalone: Tumble-weed and timeless Tithonus, Buntie and Briquette, Laughing-gas and Coco the Third, Mudski and Tarzanette. I'd hate nowto lose those names. They are the register of our friendly love forour animals. 

It begins to creep through this thick head of mine that my husband nolonger nurses any real love for either these animals or prairie life. And if that is the case, he will never get anything out of prairieliving. It will be useless for him even to try. So I may as well dowhat I can to reconcile myself to the inevitable. I am not without mymoments of revolt. But in those moods when I feel a bit uppish Iremember about my recent venture into astronomy. What's the use ofworrying, anyway? There was one ice age, and there is going to beanother ice age. I tell myself that my troubles are pretty trivial, after all, since I'm only one of many millions on this earth andsince this earth is only one of many millions of other earths whichwill swing about their suns billions and billions of years after I andmy children and my children's children are withered into dust. 

It rather takes my breath away, at times, and I shy away from it thesame as Pauline Augusta shies away from the sight of blood. It remindsme of Chaddie's New York lady with whom the Bishop ventured to discussultimate destinies. "Yes, I suppose I shall enter into eternal bliss, "responded this fair lady, "but would you mind not discussing suchdisagreeable subjects at tea-time?"

Speaking of disagreeable subjects, we seem to have a new littletrouble-maker here at Casa Grande. It's in the form of a brindle pupcalled Minty, which Dinkie--I mean, of course, which Elmer, acquiredin exchange for a jack-knife and what was left of his _Swiss FamilyRobinson_. But Minty has not been well treated by the world, and wasbrought home with a broken leg. So Whinnie and I made splints out ofan old cigar-box cover, and padded the fracture with cotton wool andbound it up with tape. Minty, in the moderated spirits of invalidism, was a meek and well behaved pup during the first few days after hisarrival, sleeping quietly at the foot of Elmer's bed and stumpingaround after his new master like a war veteran awaiting his discharge. But now that Minty's leg is getting better and he finds himself in aworld that flows with warm milk and much petting, he betrays atendency to use any odd article of wearing apparel as a teething-ring. He has completely ruined one of my bedroom slippers and doneMexican-drawn-work on the ends of the two living-room window-curtains. But what is much more ominous, Minty yesterday got hold ofDinky-Dunk's Stetson and made one side of its rim look as though ithad been put through a meat-chopper. So my lord and master has beenmaking inquiries about Minty and Minty's right of possession. And theorder has gone forth that hereafter no canines are to sleep in thishouse. It impresses me as a trifle unreasonable, all thingsconsidered, and Elmer, with a rather unsteady underlip, has asked meif Minty must be taken away from him. But I have no intention ofcountermanding Duncan's order. The crust over the volcano is quitethin enough, as it is. And whatever happens, I am resolved to be ameek and dutiful wife. But I've had a talk with Whinnie and he's goingto fix up a comfortable box behind the stove in the bunk-house, andthere the exiled Minty will soon learn to repose in peace. It'smarvelous, though, how that little three-legged animal loves myDinkie, loves my Elmer, I should say. He licks my laddie's shoes andyelps with joy at the smell of his pillow . .. Poor littleabundant-hearted mite, overflowing with love! But life, I suppose, will see to it that he is brought to reason. We must learn not to betoo happy on this earth. And we must learn that love isn't alwaysgiven all it asks for. 

_Thursday the Seventeenth_

The crust over the volcano has shown itself to be even thinner than Iimagined. The lava-shell gave way, under our very feet, and I've had aglimpse of the molten fury that can flow about us without our knowingit. And like so many of life's tragic moments, it began out ofsomething that is almost ridiculous in its triviality. 

Night before last, when Struthers was rather late in setting herbread, she heard Minty scratching and whimpering at the back door, andwithout giving much thought to what she was doing, let him into thehouse. Minty, of course, went scampering up to Dinkie's bed, where heslept secretly and joyously until morning. And all might have beenwell, even at this, had not Minty's return to his kingdom gone to hishead. To find some fitting way of expressing his joy must have taxedthat brindle pup's ingenuity, for, before any of us were up, hedescended to the living-room, where he delightedly and diligentlyproceeded to remove the upholstery from the old Chesterfield. By thetime I came on the scene, at any rate, there was nothing but a grislyskeleton of the Chesterfield left. Now, that particular piece offurniture had known hard use, and there were places where the mohairhad been worn through, and I'd even discussed the expediency of havingthe thing done over. But I knew that Minty's efforts to hasten thismovement would not meet with approval. So I discreetly decided to haveWhinnie and Struthers remove the tell-tale skeleton to the bunk-house. Before that transfer could be effected, however, the Dour Man invadedthe living-room and stood with a cold and accusatory eye inspectingthat monument of destructiveness. 

"Where's Elmer?" he demanded, with a grim look which started by heartpounding. 

"Elmer's dressing, " I said as quietly as I could. "Do you want him?"

"I do, " announced my husband, whiter in the face than I had seen himfor many a day. 

"What for?" I asked. 

"I think you know what for, " he said, meeting my eye. 

"I'm not sure that I do, " I found the courage to retort. "But I'dprefer being certain. "

Duncan, instead of answering me, went to the foot of the stairs andcalled his son. Then he strode out of the room and out of the house. Struthers, in the meantime, circumspectly took possession of Minty, who was still indecorously shaking a bit of mohair between his jocundyoung teeth. She and Minty vanished from the scene. A moment later, however, Duncan walked back into the room. He had a riding-quirt inhis hand. 

"Where's that boy?" he demanded. 

I went out to the foot of the stairs, where I met Elmer coming down, buttoning his waist as he came. For just a moment his eye met mine. Itwas a questioning eye, but not a cowardly one. I had intended to speakto him, but my voice, for some reason, didn't respond to my will. So Imerely took the boy's hand and led him into the living-room. There hisfather stood confronting him. 

"Did that pup sleep on your bed last night?" demanded the man with thequirt. 

"Yes, " said the child, after a moment of silence. 

"Did you hear me say that no dog was to sleep in this house?" demandedthe child's father. 

"Yes, " said Elmer, with his own face as white as his father's. 

"Then I think that's about enough, " asserted Duncan, turning achallenging eye in my direction. 

"What are you going to do?" I asked. My voice was shaking, in spite ofmyself. 

"I'm going to whale that youngster within an inch of his life, " saidthe master of the house, with a deadly sort of intentness. 

"I don't want you to do that, " I quavered, wondering why my words, even as I uttered them, should seem so inadequate. 

"Of course you don't, " mocked my husband. "But this is the limit. Andwhat you want isn't going to count!"

"I don't want you to do that, " I repeated. Something in my voice, Isuppose, must have arrested him, for he stood there, staring at me, with a little knot coming and going on one side of his skull, just infront of his upper ear-tip. 

"And why not?" he asked, still with that hateful rough ironic note inhis voice. 

"Because you don't know what you're punishing this child for, " I toldhim with all the quietness I could command. "And because you're in nofit condition to do it. "

"You needn't worry about my condition, " he cried out--and I could seeby the way he said it that he was still blind with rage. "Come here, you!" he called to Dinkie. 

It was then that the fatal little bell clanged somewhere at the backof my head, the bell that rings down the curtain on all the slowlyaccumulated civilization the centuries may have brought to us. I notonly faced my husband with a snort of scorn, but I tightened my gripon the child's hand. I tightened my grip on his hand and backed slowlyand deliberately away until I came to the door of my sewing-room. Then, still facing my husband, I opened that door and said: "Goinside, Dinkie. " I could not see the boy, but I knew that he had doneas I told him. So I promptly slammed the door shut and stood therefacing the gray-lipped man with the riding-quirt in his hand. He tooktwo slow steps toward me. His chin was thrust out in a way that mademe think of a fighting-cock's beak. He had not shaved that morning, and his squared jaw looked stubbled and blue and ugly. 

"You can't pull that petticoat stuff this time, " he said in a hard andthroaty tone which I had never heard from him before. "Get out of myway!"

"You will not beat that child!" And I myself couldn't have made avery pretty picture as I flung that challenge up in his teeth. 

"Get out of my way, " he repeated. He did not shout it. He said italmost quietly. But I knew, even before he reached out a shaking handto thrust me aside, that he was in deadly earnest, that nothing Icould say would hold him back or turn him aside. And it was then thatmy eye fell on the big Colt in its stained leather holster, hanging uphigh over one corner of the book-cabinet, where it had been put beyondthe reach of the children. 

I have no memory of giving any thought to the matter. My reaction musthave been both immediate and automatic. I don't think I even intendedto bunt my husband in the short-ribs the way I did, for the impact ofmy body half twisted him about and sent him staggering back severalsteps. All I know is that holster and belt came tumbling down as Isprang and caught at the Colt handle. And I was back at the doorbefore I had even shaken the revolver free. I was back just in time tohear my husband say, rather foolishly, for the third time: "Get out ofmy way!"

"You stay back there!" I called, quite as foolishly, for by this timeI had the Colt balanced in my hand and was pointing it directly at hisbody. 

He stopped short, with a vacuous look in his eyes. 

"_You fool!_" he said, in a sort of strangled whisper. But it was myface, and not the weapon, that he was staring at all the while. 

"Stay back!" I said again, with my eyes fixed on his. 

He hesitated, for a moment, and made a sound that was like the shortbark of a laugh. It was too hard and horrible, though, ever to betaken for laughter. And I knew that he was not going to do what I hadsaid. 

"Stay back!" I warned him still again. But he stepped forward, with agrim sort of deliberation, with his challenging gaze locked on mine. Icould hear a thousand warning voices, somewhere at the back of mybrain, and at the same time I could hear a thousand singing devils inmy blood trying to drown out those voices. I could see my husband'snarrowed eyes slowly widen, slowly open like the gills of a dyingfish, for the hate that he must have seen on my face obviouslyarrested him. It arrested him, but it arrested him only for a moment. He dropped his eyes to the Colt in my hand. Then he moved deliberatelyforward until his body was almost against the barrel-end. I must haveknown what it meant, just as he must have known what it meant. It washis final challenge. And I must have met that challenge. For, withoutquite knowing it, I shut my eyes and pulled the trigger. 

There had been something awful, I know, in that momentary silence. Andthere was something awful in the sound that came after it, though itwas not the sound my subconscious mind was waiting for. It wasdistinct enough and significant enough, heaven knows. But instead ofthe explosion of a shell it was the sharp snap of steel againststeel. 

The revolver was empty. It was empty-had been empty for weeks. But thesignificant fact remained that I had deliberately pulled the trigger. I had stood ready, in my moment of madness, to kill the man that Ilived with. .. . 

Had a ball of lead gone through that man's body, I don't think hecould have staggered back with a more startled expression on his face. He looked more than bewildered; he looked vaguely humiliated, oddlyand wordlessly affronted, as he stood leaning against the table-edge, breathing hard, his skin a mottled blue-white to the very lips. Hemade an effort to speak, but no sound came from him. For a moment thedreadful thought raced through me that I had indeed shot him, that insome mysterious way he was mortally hurt, without this particularbullet announcing itself as bullets usually do. I looked at therevolver, stupidly. It seemed to have grown heavy, as heavy as acook-stove in my hand. 

"You'd do that?" whispered my husband, very slowly, with a strickenlight in his eyes which I couldn't quite understand. I intended to putthe Colt on the table. But something must have been wrong with myvision, for the loathsome thing fell loathsomely to the floor. I feltsick and shaken and a horrible misty feeling of homelessness settleddown about me, of a sudden, for I remembered how closely I had skirtedthe black gulf of murder. 

"Oh, Dinky-Dunk!" I blubbered, weakly, as I groped toward him. He musthave thought that I was going to fall, for he put out his arm and heldme up. He held me up, but there wasn't an atom of warmth in hisembrace. He held me up about the same as he'd hold up an openwheat-sack that threatened to tumble over on his granary floor. Idon't know what reaction it was that took my strength away from me, but I clung to his shoulders and sobbed there. I felt as alone in thegray wastes of time as one of Gershom's lost stars. And I knew thatmy Dinky-Dunk would never bend down now and whisper into my ear anyword of comfort, any word of forgiveness. For, however things may havebeen at the first, I was the one who was now so hopelessly in thewrong, _I_ was the big offender. And that knowledge only added to mymisery as I stood there clinging to my husband's shoulders andblubbering "Oh, Dinky-Dunk!"

It must have grown distasteful to him, my foolish hanging on to him asthough he were a hitching-post, for he finally said in a remote voice:"I guess we've had about enough of this. " He led me ratherceremoniously to a chair, and slowly let me down in it. Then hecrossed over to the old leather holster and picked it up, and stoopedfor the revolver, and pushed it down in the holster and buckled thecover-flap and tossed the whole thing up to the top of thebook-cabinet again. Then, without speaking to me, he walked slowly outof the room. 

I was tempted to call him back, but I knew, on second thought, that itwould be no use. I merely sat there, staring ahead of me. Then I shutmy eyes and tried to think. I don't know why, but I was thinking aboutthe bigness of Betelgeuse, which was twenty-seven million times as bigas our sun and which was going on through its millions of miles ofspace without knowing anything about Chaddie McKail and what hadhappened to her that morning. I was wondering if there were worldsbetween me and Betelgeuse with women on them, with women as alone as Iwas, when I felt a pair of small arms tighten about my knees and anadoring small voice whispered "Mummsy!" And I forgot about Betelgeuse. For it was my Dinkie there, with his little rough hand reachinghungrily for mine. .. . 

Minty has been removed from Casa Grande. I took him over to theTeetzel ranch in the car, and young Dode Teetzel is to get a dollar aweek for looking after him and feeding him. Only Elmer and I know ofhis whereabouts. And once a week the boy can canter over on Buntie andkeep in touch with his pup. 

We have a tacit understanding that the occurrences of yesterdaymorning are a closed chapter, are not to be referred to by word ordeed. Duncan himself found it necessary to team in to Buckhorn andleft word with Struthers that he would stay in town over night. Thecall for the Buckhorn trip was, of course, a polite fabrication, anexpedient _pax in bello_ to permit the dust of battle to settle alittle about this troubled house of McKail. All day to-day I havefelt rather languid. I suppose it's the lethargy which naturallyfollows after all violence. Any respectable woman, I used to think, could keep a dead-line in her soul, beyond which the impulses of evildare not venture. But I must have been wrong. .. . All week I've beenlooking for a letter from Peter Ketley. But for once in his life heseems to have forgotten us. 

_Sunday the Twentieth_

I've been wondering to-day just what I'd do if I had to earn my ownliving. I could run a ranch, I suppose, if I still had one, but two orthree years of such work would see me a hatchet-faced old termagantwith fallen arches and a prairie-squint. Or I could raise chickens andpeddle dated eggs in a flivver-and fresco hen-coops with whitewashuntil the trap-nest of time swallowed me up in oblivion. Or I couldtake a rural school somewhere and teach the three R's to littleSlovenes and Frisians and French-Canadians even more urgently in needof soap and water. Or perhaps I could be housekeeper for one of ournew beef-kings in his new Queen-Anne Norman-Georgian Venetian palaceof Alberta sandstone with tesselated towers and bungalowsleeping-porches. Or I might even peddle magazines, or start a littlebakery in one of the little board-fronted shops of Buckhorn, or takein plain sewing and dispose of home-made preserves to the élite of thecommunity. 

But each and all of them would be mere gestures of defeat. I'm of novalue to the world. There was a time when I regarded myself as quite aSomebody, and prided myself on having an idea or two. Didn't Percyeven once denominate me as "a window-dresser"? There was a time when Ididn't have to wait to see if the pearl-handled knife was the oneintended for the fish-course, and I could walk across a waxed floorwithout breaking my neck and do a bit of shopping in the Rue de laPaix without being taken for a tourist. But that was a long, long timeago. And life during the last few years has both humbled me and taughtme my limitations. I'm a house-wife, now, and nothing more--and noteven a successful house-wife. I've let everything fall away except thethought of my home and my family. And now I find that the basket intowhich I so carefully packed all my eggs hasn't even a bottom to it. 

But I've no intention of repining. Heaven knows I've never wanted tosit on the Mourner's Bench. I've never tried to pull a sour mug, asDinky-Dunk once inelegantly expressed it. I love life and the joy oflife, and I want all of it I can get. I believe in laughter, and I'vea weakness for men and women who can sing as they work. But I'veblundered into a black frost, and even though there was something tosing about, there's scarcely a blue-bird left to do the singing. Butsometime, somewhere, there'll be an end to that silence. The blightwill pass, and I'll break out again. I know it. I don't intend to beheld down. I _can't_ be held down. I haven't the remotest idea of howit's going to happen, but I'm going to love life again, and be happy, and carol out like a meadow-lark on a blue and breezy April morning. It may not come to-morrow, and it may not come the next day. But it'sgoing to come. And knowing it's going to come, I can afford to sittight, and abide my time. .. . 

I've just had a letter from Uncle Chandler, enclosing snap-shots ofthe place he's bought in New Jersey. It looks very palatial andsettled and Old-Worldish, shaded and shadowed with trees and softenedwith herbage, dignified by the hand of time. It reminds me how manyand many a long year will have to go by before our bald young prairiecan be tamed and petted into a homeyness like that. Uncle Chandler hasrather startled me by suggesting that we send Elmer through to him, togo to school in the East. He says the boy can attend MontclairAcademy, that he can be taken there and called for every day byfaithful old Fisher, in the cabriolet, and that on Sunday he can betoted regularly to St. Luke's Episcopal Church, and occasionally gointo New York for some of the better concerts, and even have agoverness of his own, if he'd care for it. And in case I should beworrying about his welfare Uncle Chandler would send me a weeklynight-letter "describing the condition and the activities of thechild, " as the letter expresses it. It sounds very appealing, butevery time I try to think it over my heart goes down like a dab-chick. My Dinkie is such a little fellow. And he's my first-born, myman-child, and he means so much in my life. Yet he and his father arenot getting along very well together. It would be better, in manyrespects, if the boy could get away for a while, until the raw edgeshealed over again. It would be better for both of them. But there'sone thing that would happen: he would grow away from his mother. He'dcome back to me a stranger. He'd come back a little ashamed of hisshabby prairie mater, with her ten-years-old style of hair-dressingand her moss-grown ideas of things and her bald-looking prairie homewith no repose and no dignifying background and neither a private gymnor a butler to wheel in the cinnamon-toast. He'd be having all thosethings, under Uncle Chandler's roof: he'd get used to them and he'dexpect them. 

But there's one thing he wouldn't and couldn't have. He wouldn't havehis mother. And no one can take a mother's place, with a boy likethat. No one could understand him, and make allowances for him, andexplain things to him, as his own mother could. I've been thinkingabout that, all afternoon as I ironed his waists and his blueflannellet pajamas with frogs on like his dad's. And I've beenthinking of it all evening as I patched his brown corduroy knickersand darned his little stockings and balled them up in a neat littlerow. I tried to picture myself as packing them away in a trunk, andputting in beside them all the clothes he would need, and the booksthat he could never get along without, and the childish littletreasures he'd have to carry away to his new home. But it was too muchfor me. There was one thing, I began to see, which could never, neverhappen. I could never willingly be parted from my Dinkie. I couldthink of nothing to pay me up for losing him. And he needed me as Ineeded him. For good or bad, we'd have to stick together. Mother andson, together in some way we'd have to sink or swim!

_Wednesday the Thirtieth_

The tension has been relieved by Dinky-Dunk going off to Calgary. Along with him he has taken a rather formidable amount of his personalbelongings. But he explains this by stating that business will keephim in the city for at least six or seven weeks. He has been talking agood deal about the Barcona coal-mine of late, and the last night hewas with us he talked to Gershom for an hour and more about theadvantages of those newer mines over the Drumheller. The newer fieldhas a solid slate roof which makes drifting safe and easy, a finertype of coal, and a chance for big money once the railway runs in itsspur and the officials wake up to the importance of giving them thecars they need. The whole country, Dinky-Dunk claims, is underlaidwith coal, and our province alone is estimated to contain almostseventeen per cent. Of the world's known supply. And my lord andmaster expressed the intention of being in on the clean-up. 

I don't know how much of this was intended for my ears. But it servedto disquiet me, for reasons I couldn't quite discern. And the samevague depression crept over me when Dinky-Dunk took his departure. Ikept up my air of blitheness, it is true, to the last moment, and wasas casual as you please in helping Duncan to pack and reminding him toput his shaving-things in his bag and making sure the last button wason his pajamas. I kissed him good-by, as a dutiful wife ought, andheld Pauline Augusta up in the doorway so that she might attempt alast-minute hand-waving at her daddy. 

But I slumped, once it was all over. I felt mysteriously alone in anindifferent big world with the rime of winter creeping along itsedges. Even Gershom, after the children had had their lesson, becameconscious of my preoccupation and went so far as to ask if I wasn'tfeeling well. 

I smilingly assured him that there was nothing much wrong with me. 

"_Lerne zu leiden ohne zu klagen!_" as the dying Frederick said to asingularly foolish son. 

"But you're upset?" persisted Gershom, with his valorous brand oftimidity that so often reminds me of a robin defending her eggs. 

"No, it's not that, " I said with a shake of the head. "It's only thatI'm--I'm a trifle too chilly to be comfortable. "

And the foolish youth, at that, straightway fell to stoking the fire. I had to laugh a little. And that made him study me with solemn eyes. 

"Just think, Gershom, " I said as I gathered up my sewing, "my heart isperishing of cold in a province which is estimated to contain almostseventeen per cent. Of the world's known coal supply!"

And that, apparently, left him with something to think about as I mademy way off to bed . .. It's hard to write coherently, I find, whenyou're not living coherently . .. 

Syd Woodward, of Buckhorn, having learned that I can drive a tractor, has asked me if I'll take part in the plowing-match to-morrow. AndI've given my promise to show Mere Man what a woman can do in thematter of turning a mile-long furrow. I feel rather audacious over itall. And I'm glad to inject a little excitement into life . .. I'msaving up for a new sewing-machine . .. Tarzanette has got rather badlycut up in some of our barb-wire fencing. 

_Friday the Fifteenth_

The plowing-match was good fun, and I enjoyed it even more than I hadexpected. The men "kidded" me a good deal, and gave me a cheer at theend (I don't quite know whether it was for my work or my costume) andI had to pose for photographs, and a moving-picture man even followedme about for a round, shooting me as I turned my prairie stubbleupside down. But the excitement of the plowing-match has been eclipsedby a bit of news which has rather taken my breath away. _It is PeterKetley who has bought the Harris Ranch. _

_Saturday the Twenty-Third_

The rains have brought mushrooms, slathers of mushrooms, and I joy ingathering them. 

Yesterday afternoon I rode past the Harris Ranch. The old placebrought back a confusion of memories. But I was most disturbed by thesigns of building going on there. It seems to mean a new shack onAlabama Ranch. And a new shack of very considerable dimensions. I'vebeen wondering what this implies. I don't know whether to be elated ordepressed. And what business is it, after all, of mine?

My Dinkie--I have altogether given up trying to call my Dinkieanything but Dinkie--came home two evenings ago with a discolored eyeand a distinct air of silence. Gershom, too, seemed equally reticent. So I set about discreetly third-degreeing Poppsy, who finallyacknowledged, with awe in her voice, that Dinkie had been in a fight. 

It was, according to my petticoated Herodotus, a truly terrible fight. Noses got bloodied, and no one could make the fighters stop. ButDinkie was unquestionably the conqueror. Yet, oddly enough, I aminformed that he cried all through the combat. He was a cryingfighter. And he had his fight with Climmie O'Lone--trust the Irish tolook for trouble!--who seems to have been accepted as the ring-masterof his younger clan. Their differences arose out of the accusationthat Dinkie, my bashful little Dinkie, had been forcing his unwelcomedattention on one Doreen O'Lone, Climmie's younger sister. That'sabsurd, of course. And Dinkie must have realized it. He didn't want tofight, acknowledged Poppsy, from the first. He even cried over it. AndDoreen also cried. And Poppsy herself joined in. 

I fancy it was a truly Homeric struggle, for it seems to have lastedfor round after round. It lasted, I have been able to gather, untilClimmie was worsted and down on his back crying "Enough!" Which Poppsyreports Dinkie made him say three times, until Doreen nodded and saidshe'd heard. But my young son, apparently, is one of those cryingfighters, who are reckoned, if I remember right, as the worst breed ofbelligerents!

I have decided not to tell Dinkie what I know. But I'm rather anxiousto get a glimpse of this young Mistress Doreen, for whom lances arealready being shattered in the lists of youth. The O'Lones regardthemselves as the landed aristocracy of the Elk-trail District. AndDoreen O'Lone impresses me as a very musical appellative. Yet I preferto keep my kin free from all entangling alliances, even though theyhave to do with a cattle-king's offspring. .. . 

I had a short letter from Dinky-Dunk to-day, asking me to send on apackage of papers which he had left in a pigeon-hole of his desk here. It was a depressingly non-committal little note, without a glimmer ofwarmth between the lines. I'm afraid there's a certain ugly truthwhich will have to be faced some day. But I intend to stick to theship as long as the ship can keep afloat. I am so essentially a familywoman that I can't conceive of life without its home circle. Home, however, is where the heart is. And it seems to take more than oneheart to keep it going. I keep reminding myself that I have mychildren at the same time that I keep asking myself why my childrenare not enough, why they can't seem to fill my cup of contentment asthey ought. Now that their father is so much away, a great deal oftheir training is falling on my shoulders. And I must, in some way, bea model to them. So I'll continue to show them what a Penelope I canbe. Perhaps, after all, they will prove our salvation. For ouroffspring ought to be the snow-fences along the wind-harried rails ofmatrimony. They should prevent drifting along the line, and fromterminal to lonely terminal should keep traffic open . .. I haveto-night induced Poppsy to write a long and affectionate letter to her_pater_, telling him all the news of Casa Grande. Perhaps it willawaken a little pang in the breast of her absent parent. 

_Monday the Twenty-Fifth_

I have aroused the ire of the Dour Man. He has sent me a messagestrongly disapproving of my conduct. He even claims that I'vehumiliated him. I never dreamed, when that movie-man with the camerafollowed me about at the plowing-match, that my husband would wanderinto a Calgary picture-house and behold his wife in driving gauntletsand Stetson mounted on a tractor and twiddling her fingers at thecamera-operator, just to show how much at home she felt! Dinky-Dunkmust have experienced a distinctly new thrill when he saw his own wifecome riding through that pictorial news weekly. He would havepreferred not recognizing me, I suppose. But there I was, duly namedand labeled--and hence the ponderous little note of disapproval. 

But I'm not going to let Duncan start a quarrel over trivialities likethis. I intend to sit tight. There'd be little use in argument, anyway, for Duncan would only ignore me as the predatory tom-catignores the foolishly scolding robin. I'm going to be a regularmallard, and stick to these home regions until the ice forms. And ourmost mountainous troubles, after all, can't quite survive beingexteriorated through the ink-well. It relieves me to write about them. But I wish I had a woman of my own age to talk to. I get a bit lonely, now that winter is slipping down out of the North again. And I findthat I'm not so companionable as I ought to be. It comes home to me, now and then, how far away from the world we are, how remote fromeverything that counts. The tragedy of life with Chaddie McKail, Isuppose, is that she's let existence narrow down to just one thing, toher family. Other women seem to have substitutes. But I've aboutforgotten how to be a social animal. I seem to grow as segregative asthe timber-wolf. There's nothing for me in the woman's club life onegets out here. I can't force myself into church work, and the ruralreading-club is something beyond me. I simply couldn't endure thoseWomen's Institute meetings which open with a hymn and end up withsponge-cake and green tea, after a platitudinous paper on the Beautyof Prairie Life. It has its beauties, God knows, or we'd all go mad. We women, in this brand-new land, try to bolster ourselves up with thebelief that we have greatnesses which the rest of the world must getalong without. But that is only the flaunting of _La Panache_, thefeather of courage in our cap of discouragement. There is so much, somuch, we are denied! So much we must do without! So much we must seego to others! So much we must never even hope for! Oh, pioneers, greatyou are and great you must be, to endure what you have endured! Youmust be strong in your hours of secret questioning and you must bestrong in your quest for consolation. If nothing else, you must atleast be strong. And these western men of ours should all be strongmen, should all be great men, because they must have been the childrenof great mothers. A prairie mother _has_ to be a great woman. She mustbe great to survive, to endure, to leave her progeny behind her. I'veheard the Wise Men talk about nature looking after her own. I've heardsentimentalists sing about the strength that lies in the soil. But, oh, pioneers, you know what you know! In your secret heart of heartsyou remember the lonely hours, the lonely years, the lonely graves!For in the matter of infant mortality alone, prairie life shows arecord shocking to read. We are making that better, it is true, withour district nursing and our motherhood clubs and our rural phonesand our organized letting in of light and passing on of knowledge. Weare not so overburdened as those nobler women who went before us. But, oh, pioneers along these lonely northern trails, I salute you andhonor you for your courage! Your greatness will never be known. Itwill be seen only in the great country which you gave up your lives tobring to birth!

_Wednesday the Twenty-Seventh_

What weather-cocks we are! My blue Monday is over and done with, thisis a crystalline winter day with all the earth at peace with itself, and I've just had a letter from Peter asking if I could take care ofhis sister's girl, Susie Mumford, until after Christmas. The Mumfords, it seems, are going through the divorce-mill, and Susie's mother isanxious that her one and only child should be afar from the scene whenthe grist of liberty is a-grinding. 

I know nothing of Susie except what Peter has told me, that she is notyet nineteen, that she is intelligent, but obstreperous, and muchwiser than she pretends to be, that the machinery of life has alwaysrun much too smoothly about her for her own good, and that a couple ofmonths of prairie life might be the means of introducing her to herown soul. 

That's all I know of Susie, but I shall welcome her to Casa Grande. I'll be glad to see a city girl again, to talk over face-creams andthe _Follies_ and Tchaikowsky and brassieres and Strindberg with. AndI'll be glad to do a little toward repaying big-hearted old Peter forall his kindnesses of the past. Susie may be both sophisticated andintractable, but I await her with joy. She seems almost the answer tomy one big want. 

But Casa Grande, I have been realizing, will have to be refurbishedfor its coming guest. We have grown a bit shoddy about the edges here. It's hard to keep a house spick and span, with two active-bodiedchildren running about it. And my heart, I suppose, has not been inthat work of late. But I've been on a tour of inspection, and Irealize it's time to reform. So Struthers and I are about to doll upthese dilapidated quarters of ours. And I intend to have my dolorouslyneglected Guest Room (for such I used to call it) done over before thearrival of Susie. .. . 

I rode over to the Teetzels' this afternoon, to explain about ourcattle getting through on their land. It was the road-workers whobroke down the Teetzel fence, to squat on a coulée-corner for theircamp. And they hadn't the decency to restore what they had wrecked. SoBud Teetzel and I rode seven miles up the new turn-pike and overtookthose road-workers and I harangued their foreman for a full fifteenminutes. But it made little impression on him. He merely grinned andstared at me with a sort of insolent admiration on his face. And whenI had finished he audibly remarked to one of his teamsters that I madea fine figure of a woman on horseback. 

Bud says they're thinking of selling out if they can get their price. The old folks want to move to Victoria, and Bud and his brother have ahankering to try their luck up in the Peace River District. I askedBud if he wouldn't rather settle down in one of the big cities. Hemerely laughed at me. "No thank you, lady! This old prair-ee iscomp'ny enough for me!" he said as he loped, brown as a nut, along thetrail as tawny as a lion's mane, with a sky of steel-cold blue smilingdown on his lopsided old sombrero. I studied him with a lessimpersonal eye. He was a handsome and husky young giant, with the joyof life still frankly imprinted on his face. 

"Bud, " I said as I loped along beside him, "why haven't you evermarried?"

That made him laugh again. Then he turned russet as he showed me thewhite of an eye. 

"All the peaches seemed picked, in this district, " he found thecourage to proclaim. 

This made me trot out the old platitude about the fish in the seabeing as good as any ever caught--and there really ought to be anexcise tax on platitudes, for being addicted to them is quite as badas being addicted to alcohol, and quite as benumbing to the brain. 

But Bud, with his next speech, brought me up short. 

"Say, lady, if _you_ was still in the runnin' I'd give 'em a racethat'd make a coyote look like a caterpillar on crutches!"

He said it solemnly, and his solemnity kept it respectful. But it wasmy turn to laugh. And ridiculous as it may sound, this doesn't impressme as such a dark world as I had imagined! A woman, after all, is agood deal like mother earth: each has to be cultivated a little tokeep it mellow. 

. .. Where the Female is, there also is the Unexpected. For when I gothome I found that my decorous Poppsy, my irreproachable Poppsy, hadsuccumbed before the temptation to investigate my new sewing-machine. And once having nibbled at the fruit of the tree of knowledge, shewent rampaging through the whole garden. She made a stubborn effort toexhaust the possibilities of all the little hemmers, and tried theshirrer and the fire-stitch ruffler, and obviously had a fling at thebinder and a turn at the tucker. What she did to the tension-springheaven only knows. And my brand-new machine is on the blink. And mymeek-eyed little Poppsy isn't as impeccable as the world about herimagined!

_Wednesday the Third_

Susie Mumford arrived yesterday. The weather, heaven be thanked, wasperfect, an opal day with the earth as fresh-smelling as Poppsy justout of her bath. There was just enough chill in the air to make one'sblood tingle and just enough warmth in the sunlight to make it feellike a benediction. Whinstane Sandy, in fact, avers that we're in fora spell of Indian Summer. 

I motored in to Buckhorn and met Susie, who wasn't in the least what Iexpected. I was looking for a high-spirited and insolent-eyed younglady who'd probably be traveling with a French maid and a van-load oftrunks, after the manner of Lady Alicia. But the Susie I met was atired and listless and rather white-faced girl who reminds me justenough of her Uncle Peter to make me like her. The poor child knowsnext to nothing of the continent on which she was born, and theimmensity of our West has rather appalled her. She told me, drivinghome, that she had never before been this side of the Adirondacks. Yet she has crossed the Atlantic eight times and knows western Europeabout as well as she knows Long Island itself. There is amatter-of-factness about Susie which makes her easy to get along with. Poppsy took to her at once and was a garrulous and happy witness ofSusie's unpacking. Dinkie, on the other hand, developed an altogetherunlooked-for shyness and turned red when Susie kissed him. There wasno melting of the ice until the strange lady produced a very wonderfultoy air-ship, which you wind up and which soars right over thehaystacks, if you start it right. This was a present which Peter sentout. Dinkie, in fact, spent most of his spare time last night writinga letter to his Uncle Peter, a letter which he intimated he had nowish for the rest of the family to read. He was willing toacknowledge, this morning, that since he and Susie both had the sameUncle Peter, they really ought to be cousins. .. . 

Susie has not been sleeping well, and for all her weariness last nighthad to take five grains of veronal before she could settle down. Theresult is that she looks whiter than ever this morning and ate verylittle of Struthers' really splendiferous breakfast. But she made avalorous enough effort to be blithe and has rambled about Casa Grandewith the febrile, quick curiosity of a young setter, making friendswith the animals and for the first time in her life picking an egg outof a nest. I was afraid, at first, that she was going to complainabout the quietness of existence out here, for our pace must seem aslow one, after New York. But Susie says the one thing she wants ispeace. It's not often a girl not yet out of her teens makes any suchqualified demand on life. I can't help feeling that the break-up ofher family must be depressing her more than she pretends. She speaksabout it in a half-joking way, however, and said this morning: "Dadcertainly deserves a little freedom!" We sat for an hour at thebreakfast-table, pow-wowing about everything under the blessed sun. 

In some ways Susie is a very mature woman, for nineteen andthree-quarters. She is also an exceptionally companionable one. Shehas a sort of lapis-lazuli eye with paler streaks in the iris, likebanded agate. It is a brooding eye, with a great deal of beauty in it. And she has a magnolia-white skin which one doesn't often see on theprairie. It's not the sort of skin, in fact, which could last verylong on the open range. It's the sort that's had too much bevel platebetween it and the buffeting winds of the world. But it's lovely tolook upon, especially when it's touched with its almost imperceptibleshell-pink of excitement as it was this afternoon when Susie climbedon Buntie and tried a canter or two about the corrals. Susie, Inoticed, rode well. I couldn't quite make out why her riding made meat once think of Theobald Gustav. But she explained, later, that shehad been taught by a German riding-master--and then I understood. 

But I must not overlook Gershom, who duly donned his Sunday best inhonor of Susie's arrival and who is already undertaking to educate thebrooding-eyed young lady from the East. He explained to her that therewere eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of Canada stillunexplored, and Susie said: "Then lead me into the most far-away partof it!" And when he told her, during their first meal together, thatthe human brain was estimated to contain half a billion cells and thatthe number of brain impressions collected by an average person duringfifty years of life aggregated three billion, one hundred andfifty-five million, seven hundred and sixty thousand, Susie sighed andsaid it was no wonder women were so contradictory. Which impressed meas very like one of my own retorts to Gershom. I saw Susie studyinghim, studying him with a quiet and meditative eye. "I believe yourGershom is one of the few good men in the world, " she afterwardacknowledged to me. And I've been wondering why one so young should besaturated with cynicism. 

A small incident occurred to-night which disturbed me more than I canexplain to myself. Susie, who had been looking through one of Dinkie'sschool scribblers, guardedly passed the book over to me where I satsewing in front of the fire. For, whatever may happen, a prairiemother can always find plenty of sewing to do. I looked at the bottomof the page which Susie pointed out to me. There I saw two names, oneabove the other, with certain of the letters stricken out, two nameswritten like this:

[E][l]m[e][r] McKai[l]----loveDo[r][e][e]n O'[L]on[e]----friendship

[Transcriber's note: In original, letters in brackets are struck out, each with a diagonal slash. ]

And that set me off in a brown study which even Susie seemed tofathom. She smiled understandingly and turned and inspected Dinkie, bent over his arithmetic, with an entirely new curiosity. 

"I suppose that's what every mother has to face, some day, " she saidas she sat down beside me in front of the fire. 

But it seemed a fire without warmth. Life, apparently, had brought meto another of its Great Divides. My boy had a secret apart from hismother. My son was no longer all mine. 

_Friday the Fifth_

This morning at breakfast, when Dinkie and I were alone at the table, I crossed over to him and sat down beside him. 

"Dinkie, " I said, with my hand on his tousled young head, "whom do youlove best in all the world?"

"Mummy!" he said, looking me straight in the eye. And at that I drankin a deep breath. 

"Are you sure?" I demanded. 

"As sure as death and taxes, " he said with his one-sided little smile. It was a phrase which his father used to use, on similar occasions, inthe long, long ago. And it didn't quite drive the mists out of myheart. 

"And who comes next?" I asked, with my hand still on his head. 

"Buntie, " he replied, with what I suspected to be a barricaded look onhis face. 

"No, no, " I told him. "It has to be a human being. "

"Then Poppsy, " he admitted. 

"And who next?" I persisted. 

"Whinnie!" exclaimed my son. 

But I had to shake my head at that. 

"Aren't you forgetting somebody very important?" I hinted. 

"Who?" he asked, deepening just a trifle in color. 

"How about daddy?" I asked. "Isn't it about time for him there?"

"Yes, daddy, " he dutifully repeated. But his face cleared, and my ownheart clouded, as he went through the empty rite. 

Dinkie was studying that clouded face of mine, by this time, and Ibegan to feel embarrassed. But I was determined to see the thingthrough. It was hard, though, for me to say what I wanted to. 

"Isn't there somebody, somebody else you are especially fond of?" Iinquired, as artlessly as I could. And it hurt like cold steel tothink that I had to fence with my own boy in such a fashion. 

Dinkie looked at me and then he looked out of the window. 

"I think I like Susie, " he finally admitted. 

"But in your own life, Dinkie, in your work and your play, in yourschool, isn't--isn't there _somebody_?" I found the courage to ask. 

Dinkie's face grew thoughtful. For just a moment, I thought I caught atouch of the Holbein Astronomer in it. 

"There's lots of boys and girls I like, " he noncommittally asserted. And I began to see that it was hopeless. My boy had reservations fromhis own mother, reservations which I would be compelled to respect. Hewas no longer entirely and unequivocally mine. There was a wild-birdpart of him which had escaped, which I could never recapture and cageagain. The thing that his father had foretold was really coming about. My laddie would some day grow out of my reach. I would lose him. Andmy happiness, which had been trying its wings for the last few days, came down out of the sky like a shot duck. All day long, for Susie'ssake, I've tried to be light-hearted. But my efforts make me think ofa poor old worn-out movie-hall piano doing its pathetic level best tobe magnificently blithe. It's a meaningless clatter in a meaninglessworld. 

_Thursday the Eleventh_

It ought to be winter, according to the almanac, but our wonderfulIndian Summer weather continues. Susie and I have been "blue-doming"to-day. We converted ourselves into a mounted escort for Gershom andthe kiddies as far as the schoolhouse, and then rode on to Dead HorseLake, in the hope of getting a few duck. But the weather was too fine, though I managed to bring down a couple of mallard, after one of whichSusie, having removed her shoes and stockings, waded knee-deep in theslough. She enjoys that sort of thing: it's something so entirely newto the child of the city. And Susie, I might add, is already lookingmuch better. She is sleeping soundly, at last, and has promised methere shall be no more night-caps of veronal. What is more, I amgetting to know her better--and I have several revisions to make. 

In the first place, it is not the family divorce cloud that has beendarkening Susie's soul. She let the cat out of the bag, on the wayhome this afternoon. Susie has been in love with a man who didn't comeup to expectations. She was very much in love, apparently, anddisregarded what people said about him. Then, much to her surprise, her Uncle Peter took a hand in the game. It must have been rather aviolent hand, for a person so habitually placid. But Peter, apparently, wasn't altogether ignorant of the club-talk about theyoung rake in question. At any rate, he decided it was about time toact. Susie declined to explain in just what way he acted. Yet sheadmits now that Peter was entirely in the right and she, for a time, was entirely in the wrong. But it is rather like having one's appendixcut out, she protests, without an anesthetic. It takes time to healsuch wounds. Susie obviously was bowled over. She is still sufferingfrom shock. But I like the spirit of the girl. She's not the kind thatone disappointment is going to kill. And prairie life is already doingher good. For she announced this morning that her clothes werepositively getting tight for her. And such clothes they are! Suchdelicate silks and cobwebs of lace and pale-pink contraptions ofsatin! Such neatly tailored skirts and short-vamped shoes andthing-a-ma-jigs of Irish linen and platinum and gold trinkets to deckout her contemptuous little body with. For Susie takes them all with ashrug of indifference. She loves to slip on my oil-stained oldhunting-jacket and my weather-beaten old golf-boots and go meanderingabout the range. 

Another revision which I am compelled to make is that while I expectedto be the means of cheering Susie up, Susie has quite unconsciouslybeen the means of rejuvenating _me_. I think I've been able to catchat least a hollow echo of her youth from her. I _know_ I have. Twodays ago, when we motored in to Buckhorn with my precious marketing ofbutter and eggs--and Susie never before quite realized how butter andeggs reached the ultimate consumer--a visiting Odd-Fellows' band wasplaying a two-step on the balcony of the Commercial Hotel. Susie and Istopped the car, and while Struthers stared at us aghast from the backseat, we two-stepped together on the main street of Buckhorn. We justlet the music go to our heads and danced there until the crowd infront of the band began to right-about-face and a cowboy in chapsbrazenly announced that he was Susie's next partner. So we danced toour running-board, stepped into our devil-wagon, and headed for home, in the icy aura of Struthers' sustained indignation. 

I begin to get terribly tired of propriety. I don't know whether it'sStruthers, or Struthers and Gershom combined, or having to watch one'sstep so when there are children about one. But I'm tired of beingrespectable. I'm tired of holding myself in. I warn the world that I'mabout ready for anything, anything from horse-stealing to putting adummy-lady in Whinstane Sandy's bed. I don't believe there's anywickedness that's beyond me. I'm a reckless and abandoned woman. Andif that cold-blooded old Covenanter doesn't get home from Calgarypretty soon I'm going buckboard riding with Bud Teetzel!

I've been asking Susie if we measure up to her expectations. She said, in reply, that we fitted in to a T. For her Uncle Peter, sheacknowledged, had already done us in oils on the canvas of hercuriosity. She accused me, however, of reveling in that primitivenesswhich is the last resort of the sophisticated--like the log cabins thecity folk fashion for themselves when they get up in the Adirondacks. And Casa Grande, she further amended, impressed her as being almostdisappointingly comfortable. 

After that Susie fell to talking about Peter. She is affectionatelycontemptuous toward her uncle, protesting that he's forever throwingaway his chances and letting other people impose on his good nature. It was lucky, averred Susie, that he was born with a silver spoon inhis mouth. For he was a hopeless espouser of Lost Causes. She inclinedto the belief that he should have married young, should have marriedyoung and had a flock of children, for he was crazy about kiddies. 

I asked Susie what sort of wife Peter should have chosen. And Susiesaid Peter should have hitched up with a good, capable, practical-minded woman who could manage him without letting him knowhe was being managed. There was a widow in the East, acknowledged hisniece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter wasstill free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow heemulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the mostabsurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. Thewidow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle'seccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life mightin the end affect his intellect!

The thought of Peter marrying rather gave me a shock. It was likebeing told by some authority in astronomy that your earth was about tocollide with Wernecke's Comet. And, vain peacock that I was, I ratherliked to think of Peter going through life mourning for me, alone andmelancholy and misogynistic for the rest of his days! Yet there mustbe dozens, there must be hundreds, of attractive girls along the pathswhich he travels. I found the courage to mention this fact to Susie, who merely laughed and said her Uncle Peter would probably be saved byhis homeliness. But I can't say that I ever regarded Peter Ketley ashomely. He may never carry off a blue ribbon from a beauty show, buthe has the sort of face that a woman of sense can find tremendousappeal in. Your flapper type, I suppose, will always succumb to thecurled Romeo, but it's the ruggeder and stronger man with the brightmind and the kindly heart who will always appeal to the clearer-eyedwoman who has come to know life. .. . Susie has told me, by the way, that Josie Langdon and her husband quarreled on their honeymoon, quarreled the first week in Paris and right across the Continent forthe momentous reason that Josie _insisted on putting sugar in herclaret_!

I've been doing a good deal of thinking, the last few hours. I've beenwondering if I'm a Lost Cause. And I've been wondering why womenshould want to put sugar in their claret. If it's made to be bitter, why not accept the bitterness, and let it go at that?

_Friday the Twelfth_

Dinky-Dunk has just sent word that he will be home to-morrow night andasks if I'll mind motoring in to Buckhorn for him. 

It impresses me as a non-committal little message, yet it means moreto me than I imagined. _My husband is coming home. _

Susie has been eying me all afternoon, with a pucker of perplexityabout her lapis-lazuli eyes. We are busy, getting things to rights. And I've made an appallingly long list of what I must buy in Buckhornto-morrow. Even Struthers has perked up a bit, and is making furtivepreparations for a sage-tea wash in the morning. 

_Tuesday the Sixteenth_

Why is life so tangled up? Why can't we be either completely happy orcompletely the other way? Why must wretchedness come sandwiched inbetween slices of hope and contentment, and why must happiness behaunted by some ghostly echo of pain? And why can't people be all goodor all bad, so that the tares and the wheat never get mixed uptogether and make a dismal mess of our harvest of Expectation?

These are some of the questions I've been asking myself since Duncanwent back to Calgary last night. He stayed only two days. And theywere days of terribly complicated emotions. I went to the station forhim, on Saturday, and in my impatience to be there on time foundmyself with an hour and a half of waiting, an hour and a half ofwandering up and down that ugly open platform in the clear cool lightof evening. There was a hint of winter in the air, an intimidatingnorthern nip which made the thought of a warm home and an open fire aconsolation to the chilled heart. And I felt depressed, in spite ofeverything I could do to bolster up my courage. In the first place, Icouldn't keep from thinking of Alsina Teeswater. And in the secondplace, never, never on the prairie, have I watched a railway-traincome in or a railway-train pass away without feeling lonesome. Itreminds me how big is the outside world, how infinitesimal is ChaddieMcKail and her unremembered existence up here a thousand miles fromNowhere! It humbles me. It reminds me that I have in some way failedto mesh in with the bigger machinery of life. 

I had a lump in my throat, by the time Dinky-Dunk's train pulled inand I saw him swing down from the car-steps. I made for him throughthe crowd, in fact, with my all but forgotten Australian crawl-stroke, and accosted him with rather a briny kiss and so tight a hug that hestood back and studied my face. He wanted to ask, I know, if anythinghad happened. He was obviously startled, and just a trifleembarrassed. My lump, by this time, was bigger than ever, but I had toswallow it in secret. Dinky-Dunk, I found, was changed in many ways. He was tired, and he seemed older. But he was prosperous-looking, inbrand-new raiment, and reported that luck was still with him andeverything was flourishing. Give him one year, he protested, and he'dshow them he wasn't a piker. 

I waited for him to ask about the children, but his mind seemed fullof his Barcona coal business. The railway was learning to treat themhalf decently and the coal was coming out better than they'd hopedfor. They'd a franchise to light the town, developing their power fromthe mine screenings, and what they got from this would be so muchvelvet. And he had a chance to take over one of the finest houses inMount Royal, if he had a family along with him to excuse suchmagnificence. 

That final speech of his brought me up short. It was dark along thetrail, and dark in my heart. And more things than one had happenedthat day to humble me. So I took one hand off the wheel and put it onhis knee. 

"Do you want me to go to Calgary?" I asked him. 

"That's up to you, " he said, without budging an inch. He said it, infact, with a steel-cold finality which sent my soul cringing back intoits kennel. And the trail ahead of me seemed blacker than ever. 

"I'll have to have time to think it over, " I said with a composurewhich was nine-tenths pretense. 

"Some wives, " he remarked, "are willing to help their husbands. "

"I know it, Dinky-Dunk, " I acknowledged, hoping against hope he'd giveme the opening I was looking for. "And I want to help, if you'll onlylet me. "

"I think I'm doing my part, " he rather solemnly asserted. I couldn'tsee his face, in the dark, but there was little hope to be wrung fromthe tone of his voice. So I knew it would be best to hold my peace. 

Casa Grande blazed a welcome to us, as we drove up to it, and thechildren, thank heaven, were relievingly boisterous over the adventureof their dad's return. He seemed genuinely amazed at their growth, seemed slightly irritated at Dinkie's long stares of appraisal, andfeigned an interest in the paraded new possessions of Poppsy and herbrother--until it came to Peter's toy air-ship, which was thrustalmost bruskly aside. 

And that reminds me of one thing which I am reluctant to acknowledge. Dinky-Dunk was anything but nice to Susie. He may have his perversereasons for disliking everything in any way connected with PeterKetley, but I at least expected my husband to be agreeable to thecasual guest under his roof. Through it all, I must confess, Susiewas wonderful. She made no effort to ignore Duncan, as his ignoring ofher only too plainly merited. She remained, not only poised andimperturbable, but impersonal and impenetrable. She found herself, Ithink, driven just a tiny bit closer to Gershom, who still shows aplacid exterior to Duncan's slightly contemptuous indifference. 

My husband, I'm afraid, was not altogether happy in his own home. Inone way, of course, I can not altogether blame him for that, since hisbigger interests now are outside that home. But I begin to see howdangerous these long separations can be. Somewhere and at some time, before too much water runs under the bridges, there will have to be areadjustment. 

I realized that, in fact, as I drove Duncan back to the station lastnight, after I'd duly signed the different papers he'd brought forthat purpose. I had a feeling that every chug of the motor wascarrying him further and further out of my life. Heaven knows, I waswilling enough to eat crow. I was ready to bury the hatchet, and buryit in my own bosom, if need be, rather than see it swinging free tostrike some deeper blow. 

"Dinky-Dunk, " I said after a particularly long silence between us, "what is it you want me to do?"

My heart was beating much faster than he could have imagined and I wasgrateful for the chance to pretend the road was taking up most of myattention. 

"Do about what?" he none too encouragingly inquired. 

"We don't seem to be hitting it off the way we should be, " I went on, speaking as quietly as I was able. "And I want you to tell me whereI'm failing to do my share. "

That note of humility from me must have surprised him a little, for werode quite a distance without a word. 

"What makes you feel that way?" he finally asked. 

I found it hard to answer that question. It would never be easy, atany rate, to answer it as I wanted to. 

"Because things can't go on this way forever, " I found the courage totell him. 

"Why not?" he asked. He seemed indifferent again. 

"Because they're all wrong, " I rather tremulously replied. "Can't yousee they're all wrong?"

"But why do you want them changed?" he asked with a disheartening sortof impersonality. 

"For the sake of the children, " I told him. And I could feel theimpatient movement of his body on the car seat beside me. 

"The children!" he repeated with acid-drop deliberation. "Thechildren, of course! It's always the children!"

"You're still their father, " I reminded him. 

"A sort of honorary president of the family, " he amended. 

Hope ebbed out of my heart, like air out of a punctured tire. 

"Aren't you making it rather hard for me?" I demanded, trying to holdmyself in, but feeling the bob-cat getting the better of the purringtabby. 

"I've rather concluded that was the way you made it for _me_, "countered Duncan, with a coolness of manner which I came more and moreto resent. 

"In what way?" I asked. 

"In shutting up shop, " he rather listlessly responded. 

"I don't think I quite understand, " I told him. 

"Well, in crowbarring me out of your scheme of life, if you insist onknowing, " were the words that came from the husband sitting so closebeside me. "You had your other interests, of course. But you alsoseem to have had the idea that you could turn me loose like a rangehorse. I could paw for my fodder and eat snow when I got thirsty. Youdidn't even care to give me a wind-break to keep a forty-mile blizzardout of my bones. You didn't know where I was browsing, and didn't muchcare. It was up to me to rustle for myself and be rounded up when thewinter was over and there was another spell of work on hand!"

We rode on in silence, for almost a mile, with the cold air beatingagainst my body and a colder numbness creeping about the corner of myheart. 

"Do you mean, Dinky-Dunk, " I finally asked, "that you want yourfreedom?"

"I'm not saying that, " he said, after another short silence. 

"Then what is it you want?" I asked, wondering why the windshieldshould look so blurred in the half-light. 

"I want to get something out of life, " was his embittered retort. 

It was a retort that I thought over, thought over with an oddlysettling mind, like a stirred pool that has been left to clear itself. For that grown man sitting there beside me seemed ridiculously like aspoiled child, an indulged child forlornly alone in the fogs of hisown arrogance. He made me think of a black bear which bites at thebullet wound in his own body. I felt suddenly sorry for him, in amaternal sort of way. I felt sorry for him at the same time that Iremained a trifle afraid of him, for he still possessed, I knew, hisblack-bear power of inflicting unlooked-for and ursine blows. I simplyached to swing about on him and say: "Dinky-Dunk, what you need is agood spanking!" But I didn't have the courage. I had to keep my senseof humor under cover, just as you have to blanket garden-geraniumsbefore the threat of a black frost. Yet, oddly enough, I feltfortified by that sense of pity. It seemed to bring with it theimpression that Duncan was still a small boy who might some day growout of his badness. It made me feel suddenly older and wiser than thisovergrown child who was still crying for the moon. And with thatfeeling came a wave of tolerance, followed by a smaller wave of faith, of faith that everything might yet come out right, if only I couldlearn to be patient, as mothers are patient with children. 

"And I, on my part, Dinky-Dunk, want to see you get the very best outof life, " I found myself saying to him. My intentions were good, but Isuppose I made my speech in a very superior and school-teachery sortof way. 

"I guess I've got about all that's coming to me, " he retorted, withthe note of bitterness still in his voice. 

And again I had the feeling of sitting mother-wise and mother-patientbeside an unruly small boy. 

"There's much more, Dinky-Dunk, if you only ask for it, " I said asgently as I was able. 

He turned, at that, and studied me in the failing light, studied mewith a sharp look of interrogation on his face. I had the feeling, ashe did so, of something epochal in the air, as though the drama oflife were narrowing up to its climactic last moment. Yet I felthelpless to direct the course of that drama. I nursed the impressionthat we stood at the parting of the ways, that we stood hesitating atthe fork of two long and lonely trails which struck off across anillimitable world, farther and farther apart. I vaguely regretted thatwe were already in the streets of Buckhorn, for I was half hoping thatDuncan would tell me to stop the car. Then I vaguely regretted that Iwas busy driving that car, as otherwise I might have been free to getmy arms about that granitic Dour Man of mine and strangle him intosubmitting to that momentary mood of softness which seems to come lessand less to the male as he grows older. 

But Duncan merely laughed, a bit uneasily, and just as suddenly grewsilent again. I had a sense of asbestos curtains coming down betweenus, coming down before the climax was reached or the drama was ended. I couldn't help wondering, as we drove into the cindered station-yardwhere the lights were already twinkling, if Dinky-Dunk, like myself, sat waiting for something which failed to manifest itself, if he toohad held back before the promise of some decisive word which I waswithout the power to utter. For we were only half-warm, the two of us, toying with the ghosts of the dead past and childishly afraid of thefuture. We were Laodiceans, neither hot nor cold, without the primalhunger to reach out and possess what we too timidly desired. We weremore neutral even than Ferdinand and the Lady of the Bust, for we nolonger cared sufficiently to let the other know we cared, but waitedand waited in that twilight where all cats are gray. 

There was, mercifully, very little time left for us before the traincame in. We kept our masks on, and talked only of every-day things, about the receipt for the ranch taxes and what steers Whinnie should"finish" and the new granary roof and the fire-lines about thehaystacks. Without quite knowing it, when the train pulled in, I putmy arm through my husband's--and for the second time that evening heturned sharply and inspected my face. I felt as though I wanted tohold him back, to hold him back from something unescapable buttragically momentous. I think he felt sorry for me. At any rate, afterhe had swung his suit-case up on the car-platform, he turned andkissed me good-by. But it was the sort of kiss one gets at funerals. It left me standing there watching the tail-lights blink off down thetrack, as desolate as though I had been left alone on the deadestpromontory of the deadest planet lost in space. I stood there untilthe lights were gone. I stood there until the platform was empty againand my car was the only car left along the hard-packed cinders. So Iclimbed into the driving-seat, and pulled on my gauntlets, and headedfor home. .. . 

Back at Casa Grande I found Dinkie and Whinnie beside the bunk-housestove, struggling companionably through the opening chapters of_Treasure Island_. My boy smiled up at me, for a moment, but hismind, I could see, was intent on the page along which Whinnie'sstubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow oftext. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. Inmy own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at hischemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front ofthe fire, idling over my first volume of _Jean Christophe_. 

She read three sentences aloud as I sat down beside her. "How happy heis! He is made to be happy!. .. Life will soon see to it that he isbrought to reason. "

She seemed to expect some comment from me, but I found myself withnothing to say. In fact, we both sat there for a long time, staring insilence at the fire. 

"Why do you live with a man you don't love?" she suddenly asked out ofthe utter stillness. 

It startled me, that question. It also embarrassed me, for I couldfeel my color mount as Susie's lapis-lazuli eyes rested on my face. 

"What makes you think I don't love him?" I countered, reminding myselfthat Susie, after all, was still a girl in her teens. 

"It's not a matter of thinking, " was Susie's quiet retort. "I _know_you don't. "

"Then I wish I could be equally certain, " I said with a defensivestiffening of the lines of dignity. 

But Susie smiled rather wearily at my forlorn little parade of_hauteur_. Then she looked at the fire. 

"It's hell, isn't it, being a woman?" she finally observed, unconsciously paraphrasing a much older philosopher. 

"Sometimes, " I admitted. 

"I don't see why you stand it, " was her next meditative shaft in mydirection. 

"What would you do about it?" I guardedly inquired. 

Susie's face took on one of its intent looks. She was only in herteens, but life, after all, hadn't dealt over-lightly with her. Sheimpressed me, at the moment, as a secretly ardent young person whosehard-glazed little body might be a crucible of incandescent thoughinvisible emotions. 

"What would you do about it?" I repeated, wondering what gave somepersons the royal right of doing the questionable and making it seemunquestionable. 

"_Live!_" said Susie with quite unlooked-for emphasis. "_Live_--whatever it costs!"

"Wouldn't you regard this as living?" I asked, after a moment ofthought. 

"Not as you ought to be, " averred Susie. 

"Why not?" I parried. 

Susie sighed. She began to see that it was beyond argument, I suppose. Then she too had her period of silence. 

"But what are you getting out of it?" she finally demanded. "What isgoing to happen? What ever _has_ happened?"

"To whom?" I asked, resenting the unconscious cruelty of herquestioning. 

"To you, " was the reply of the hard-glazed young hedonist confrontingme. 

"Are you flattering me with the inference that I was cut out forbetter things?" I interrogated as my gaze met Susie's. It was her turnto color up a bit. Then she sighed again, and shook her head. 

"I don't suppose it's doing either of us one earthly bit of good, " shesaid with a listless small smile of atonement. "And I'm sorry. "

So we let the skeletons stalk away from our pleasant fireside andsecrete themselves in their customary closets of silence. 

But I've been thinking a good deal about that question of Susie's. What _has_ happened to me, out here on the prairie? What has indeedcome into my life?. .. 

I married young and put a stop to those romantic adventurings whichenrich the lives of most girls and enlighten the days of many women. Imarried a man and lived with him in a prairie shack, and sewed andbaked for him, and built a new home and lost it, and began over again. I had children, and saw one of them die, and felt my girlhood slipaway, and sold butter and eggs, and loved the man of my choice andcleaved to him and planned for my children, until I saw the man of mychoice love another woman. And still I clung to my sparless hulk of ahome, hoping to hold close about me the children I had brought intothe world and would some day lose again to the world. And that wasall. That was everything. It is true, nothing much has ever happenedto me. .. . 

But I stop, to think this over. If these are the small things, thenwhat are the big things of life? What is it that other women get? Ihave sung and been happy; I have known great joy and walked big withHope. I have loved and been loved. I have known sorrow, and I haveknown birth, and I have sat face to face with death. I have, afterall, pretty well run the whole gamut, without perhaps realizing it. For these, after all, are the big things, the elemental things, oflife. They are the basic things which leave scant room for themomentary fripperies and the hand-made ornaments of existence. .. . 

Heigho! I seem to grow into a melancholy Jacques with the advancingyears. That's the way of life, I suppose. But I've no intention ofthrowing up the sponge. If I can no longer get as much fun out of thegame as I want, I can at least watch my offspring taking their joy outof it. God be thanked for giving us our children! We can still restour tired old eyes on them, just as the polisher of precious stonesused to keep an emerald in front of him, to relieve his strainedvision by gazing at its soft and soothing greenness. 

I have just crept in to take a look at my precious Dinkie, fast asleepin the old cast-iron crib that is growing so small for him he has tolie catercornered on his mattress. He seemed so big, stretched outthere, that he frightened me with the thought he couldn't be a childmuch longer. There are no babies left now in my home circle. And Istill have a shamefaced sort of hankering to hold a baby in my armsagain!

_Wednesday the Thirty-First_

Susie has promised to stay with us until after Christmas. And theholidays, I realize, are only a few weeks away. Struthers is knittinga sweater of flaming red and rather grimly acknowledged, when I pinnedher down, that it was for Whinstane Sandy. There was a snow-flurrySunday, and Gershom took Susie riding in the old cutter, scratchinggrittily along the half-covered trails but apparently enjoying it. Mypoor little Poppsy, who rather idolizes Gershom, is transparentlyjealous of his attentions to Susie. Yet Gershom, I know, is nice toSusie and nothing more. He is still my loyal but carefully restrainedknight. It's a shame, I suppose, to bobweasel him the way Ioccasionally do. But I can't quite help it. His goody-goodiness is asprovocative to my baser nature as a red flag to an Andulasian bull. And a woman who was once reckoned as a heart-breaker has to keep herhand in with _something_. I've got to convince myself that the lastshot hasn't gone from the locker which Duncan Argyll McKail oncerifled. I spoiled Gershom's supper for him the other night by askingwhat it was made some people have such a mysterious influence overother people. And I caught him up short, last Sunday morning, when hetried to argue that I was a sort of paragon in petticoats. 

"Don't you run away with the idea I'm that kind of an angel, " Ipromptly assured him. "I'm an outlaw, from saddle to sougan, and I canbuck like a bear fightin' bees. I'm a she-devil crow-hopping around inskirts. And I could bu'st every commandment slap-bang across my knee, once I got started, and leave a trail of crime across the fair face ofnature that would make an old Bow-Gun vaquero's back-hair stand up. I'm just a woman, Gershom, a little lonely and a little loony, andthere's so much backed-up bad in me that once the dam gives waythere'll be a hell-roaring old whoop-up along these dusty oldtrails!"

Gershom turned white. 

"But there's your little ones to think of, " he quaveringly remindedme. 

"Yes, there's my little ones to think of, " I echoed, wondering whereI'd heard that familiar old refrain before. My bark, after all, ismuch worse than my bite. About all I can do is take things out intalk. I'm only a faded beauty, brooding over my antique adventures asa heart-breaker. But I know of one heart I'd still like to break--if Ihad the power. No; not break; but bend up to the cracking point!

_Monday the Nineteenth_

How Time takes wing for the busy! It's only six days to Christmas andI've still my box to get off for Olga and her children. We've sent toPeter some really charming snap-shots of the children, which Susietook. The general effect of one, I must acknowledge, is seriouslydamaged by the presence of their Mummy. 

Dinky-Dunk doubts if he'll be able to get home for the holidays. But Isent him a box, on Saturday, made up of those things which he likesbest to eat and a set of the children's pictures, nicely mounted. I'vealso had Dinkie and Poppsy write a long letter to their dad, a taskwhich they performed with more constraint than I had anticipated. Ihad my own difficulties, along the same line, for I had taken aphotograph of poor little Pee-Wee's grave with a snow-drift across oneend of it, and had written on the bottom of the mounting-card: "_Wemust remember. _" But as I stood studying this, before putting it innext to Poppsy's huge Christmas-card gay with powdered mica I felt afoolish tear or two run down my cheek. And I realized it would neverdo to cloud my Dinky-Dunk's day with memories which might not bealtogether happy. So I've kept the picture of the little white-fencedbed with the white snow-drift across its foot. .. . 

Susie is in bed with a bad cold, which she caught studying astronomywith Gershom. Poppsy was not in the least put out when she watched mepreparing a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I ampersuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of retributivejustice. But I hope Susie is better by the holiday. Whinnie has theChristmas Tree hidden away in the stable, and already a number ofmysterious parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel verygallantly sent me over a huge turkey, an eighteen-pounder, andto-morrow I have to go into Buckhorn for my mail-order shipments. Wehave decorated the house with a whole box of holly from Victoria andI've hung a sprig of mistletoe in the living-room doorway. Thechildren, of course, are on tiptoe with expectation. But I can'tescape the impression that I'm merely acting a part, that I'm aPagliacci in petticoats. Heaven knows I clown enough; no one canaccuse me of not going through the gestures. But it seems likefox-trotting along the deck of a sinking ship. 

I stood under the mistletoe, this morning, and dared Gershom to kissme. He turned quite white and made for the door. But I caught him bythe coat, like Potiphar's wife, and pulled him back to the authorizingberry-sprig and gave him a brazen big smack on the cheek-bone. Heturned a sunset pink, at that, and marched out of the room withoutsaying a word. But he was shaking his head as he went, at myshamelessness, I suppose. Poor old Gershom! I wish there were more menin the world like him. The other day Susie intimated that he was toohomosexual and that it was the polygamous wretches who really kept theworld going. But I refuse to subscribe to that sophomoric philosophyof hers which would divide the race into fools and knaves. "It's saferbeing sane than mad; it's better being good than bad!" as Robertremarked. And I know at least one strong man who is not bad; and onebad man who is not strong. 

_Tuesday the Twenty-Seventh_

The great Day has come and gone. And I'm not sorry. There was a cloudover my heart that kept me from getting the happiness out of it Iought. I hoped we would hear from Peter, but for the first time inhistory he overlooked us. 

Dinky-Dunk, as he had warned us, could not get home for the holidays. But he surprised me by sending a really wonderful box for the kiddies, and even a gorgeous silver-mounted collar for Scotty. Susie is upagain, but she is still feeling a bit listless. I heard Gershominforming her to-night that her blood travels at the rate of sevenmiles per hour and that if all the energy of Niagara Falls wereutilized it could supply the world with seven million horse-power. Ido wish Gershom would get over trying to pat the world on the head, instead of shaking hands with it! I'm afraid I'm losing my lilt. Ican't understand why I should keep feeling as blue as indigo. I am awell of acid and a little sister to the crab-apple. I think I'll makeSusie come down so we can humanize ourselves with a little music. ForI feel like a Marie Bashkirtseff with a bilious attack. .. . 

Whinstane Sandy has just come in with Peter's box, two days late. Ifelt sure that Peter would not utterly forget us. There is still agreat deal of shouting down in the kitchen, where that most miraculousof boxes has been unpacked. As for myself, I've had a hankering to bealone, to think things over. But my meditations don't seem to get meanywhere. .. . Dinkie has just come up to show me his brand-new bridlefor Buntie. It is a magnificent bridle, as shiny and jingly as any ladcould desire. I tried to get him to put it down, so that I could drawhim over close to me and talk to him. But Dinkie is too excited forany such demonstration. He's beginning, I'm afraid, to consideremotion a bit unmanly. He seems to be losing his craving to be pettedand pampered. There are times, I can see, when he desires hisfence-lines to be respected. 

_Sunday the Twenty-Ninth_

Nearly six weeks, I notice, have slipped by. For a month and a half, apparently, the impulse to air my troubles went hibernating with thebears. Yet it has been a mild winter, so far, with very little snowand a great deal of sunshine--a great deal of sunshine which doesn'telate me as it ought. I can't remember who it was said a happy peoplehas no history. But that's not true of a happy woman. It's when herheart is full that she makes herself heard, that she sings like a larkto the world. When she's wretched, she retires with her grief. .. . 

I haven't been altogether wretched, it's true, just as I haven't beenaltogether hilarious, but it disturbs me to find that for a month anda half I haven't written a line in this, the mottled old book of mylife. It's not that the last month or two has been empty, for nomonths are really empty. They have to be filled with something. Butthere are times, I suppose, when lives lie fallow, the same as fieldslie fallow, times when the days drag like harrow-teeth across theperplexed loam of our soul and nothing comes of it at all. Not, Irepeat, that I have been momentously unhappy. It's more that a sort ofsterilizing indifferency took possession of me and made the little upsand downs of existence as unworthy of record as the ups and downs ofthe waves on the deadest shores of the Dead Sea. It's not that I'midle, and it's not that I'm old, and it's not that there's anythingwrong with this disappointingly healthy body of mine. But I ratherthink I need a change of some kind. I even envy Susie, who has ambledon to the Coast and is staying with the Lougheeds in Victoria, playinggolf and picking winter roses and writing back about her trips upVancouver Island and her approaching journey down into California. 

"What do we know of the New World, " she parodied in her last letterthat came to me, "who only the old East know?" Then she goes on tosay: "I'm just back from a West Coast trip on the roly-poly _Maquinna_and if my thoughts go wobbly and my hand goes crooked it's because myhead is so prodigiously full of

SEALSSALMONSUNSETSSTARSSURFSOLANDER ISLANDSIWASHESSAGHALIE LAMONTISSKOOKUM CHUCKSEA-LIONS

[Transcriber's note: In original, initial "S" was one very largedecorative letter, 10 letter-heights tall. ]

and alas, also _Seasickness_, that I can't think straight!"

Susie's soul, apparently, has had the dry-shampoo it was in need of. But as for me, I'm like an old horse-shoe with its calks worn off. TheMaster-Blacksmith of Life should poke me deep into His fires and flingme on His anvil and make me over!

I've been worrying about my Dinkie. It's all so trivial, in a way, andyet I can't persuade myself it isn't also tragic. He told Susie, before she left, that he was quite willing to go to bed a littleearlier one night, because then "he could dream about Doreen. " And Inoticed, not long ago, that instead of taking just _one_ of our NewtonPippins to school with him, he had formed the habit of taking _two_. On making investigation, I discovered that this second appleultimately and invariably found its way into the hands of MistressDoreen O'Lone. And last week Dinkie autocratically commanded WhinstaneSandy to hitch Mudski up in the old cutter, to go sleigh-riding withthe lady of his favor to the Teetzels' taffy-pull. Dinkie's mother wasnot consulted in the matter--and that is the disturbing feature of itall. I can't help remembering what Duncan once said about my boygrowing out of my reach. If I ever lost my Dinkie I would indeed bealone, terribly and hopelessly alone. 

_Wednesday the Eighth_

Dinkie, who has been disturbing me the last few days by going aboutwith an air of suppressed excitement, brought my anxiety to a headyesterday by staring into my face and then saying:

"Mummy, I've got a secret!"

"What secret?" I asked, doing my best to appear indifferent. 

But Dinkie was not to be trapped. 

"It wouldn't be a secret, if I told you, " he sagaciously explained. 

I studied my child with what was supposed to be a reproving eye. 

"You mean you can't even tell your own Mummy?" I demanded. 

He shook his head, in solemn negation. 

"But can you, some day?" I pursued. 

He thought this over. 

"Yes, some day, " he acknowledged, squeezing my knee. 

"How long will I have to wait?" I asked, wondering what could bringsuch a rhapsodic light into his hazel-specked eye. I thought, ofcourse, of Doreen O'Lone. And I wished the O'Lones would follow in thefootsteps of so many other successful ranchers and trek off toCalifornia. Then, as I sat studying Dinkie, I countermanded that wish. For its fulfillment would bring loneliness to the heart of myladdie--and loneliness is hell! So, instead, I struggled as best Icould to banish all thought of the matter from my mind. But it wasonly half a success. I remembered that Gershom himself had been goingabout as abstracted as an ant-eater and as gloomy as a crow, duringthe last week; and I kept sniffing something unpropitious up-wind. Ieven hoped that Dinkie would return to the subject, as children with asecret have the habit of doing. But he has been as tight-lipped on thematter as his reticent old dad might have been. 

_Wednesday the Fifteenth_

I got an altogether unlooked-for Valentine yesterday. It was a briefbut a significant letter from Dinky-Dunk, telling me that he had"taken over" the Goodhue house in Mount Royal and asking me if Iintended to be its mistress. He has bought the house, apparently, completely furnished and is getting ready to move into it the firstweek in March. 

The whole thing has rather taken my breath away. I don't object to anultimatum, but I do dislike to have it come like a bolt from the blue. I have arrived at my Rubicon, all right, and about everything that'sleft of my life, I suppose, will hang on my decision. I don't knowwhether to laugh or to cry, to be horrified or hilarious. At onemoment I have a tendency to emulate Marguerite doing the Jewel-Song in_Faust_. "This isn't _me_! This isn't _me_!" I keep protesting tomyself. But Marguerite, I know, would never be so ungrammatical. Andthen I begin to foresee difficulties. The mere thought of leaving CasaGrande tears my heart. When we go away, as that wise man of Parisonce said, we die a little. This will always seem my home. I couldnever forsake it utterly. I dread to forsake it for even a portion ofeach year. I am a part of the prairie, now, and I could never beentirely happy away from it. And to accept that challenge--for howeverone may look at it, it remains a challenge--and go to the new home inCalgary would surely be another concession. And I have been conceding, conceding, for the sake of my children. How much more can I concede?

Yet, when all is said and done, I am one of a family. I am not a freeagent. I am chained to the oar for life. When we link up with the racewe have more than the little ring of our own Ego to remember. It isnot, as Dinky-Dunk once pointed out to me, a good thing to get"Indianized. " We have our community obligations and they must befaced. The children, undoubtedly, would have advantages in the city. And to find my family reunited would be "_le désir de paraître_. " ButI can't help remembering how much there is to remember. I'm humblernow, it's true, than I once was. I no longer say "One side, please!"to life, while life, like old Major Elmes on Murray Hill, declines tovary its course for one small and piping voice. Instead of gettinggangway, I find, I'm apt to get an obliterating thump on the spine. Heaven knows, I want to do the right thing. But the issue seems sohopelessly tangled. I have brooded over it and I have even prayed overit. But it all seems to come to nothing. I sometimes nurse a ghostlysort of hope that it may be taken out of my hands, that some poweroutside myself may intervene to decide. For it impresses me as ominousthat I should be able to hesitate at such a time, when a woman, foronce in her life, should know her own mind, should see her own fixedgoal and fight her way to it. I've been wondering if I haven't ebbedaway into that half-warm impersonality which used to impress me as thelast stage in moral decay. 

But I'm not the fishy type of woman. I know I'm not. And I'm not ahard-head. I've always had a horror of being hard, for fear myhardness might in some way be passed on to my Dinkie. I want to keepmy boy kindly and considerate of others, and loyal to the people wholove him. But I balk at that word "loyal. " For if I expect loyalty inmy offspring I surely must have it myself. And I stood up before aminister of God, not so many years ago, and took an oath to proveloyal to my husband, to cleave to him in sickness and in health. Ialso took an oath to honor him. But he has made that part of thecompact almost impossible. And my children, if I go back to him, willcome under his influence. And I can't help questioning what thatinfluence will be. I have only one life to live. And I have a humananxiety to get out of it all that is coming to me. I even feel that itowes me something, that there are certain arrears of happiness to bemade up. .. . I wish I had a woman, older and wiser than myself, to talkthings over with. I have had the impulse to write to Peter, and tellhim everything, and ask him what I ought to do. But that doesn'timpress me as being quite fair to Peter. And, oddly enough, it doesn'timpress me as being quite fair to Dinky-Dunk. So I'm going to wait aweek or two and let the cream of conviction rise on the pan ofindecision. There's a tiny parliament of angels, in the inner chambersof our heart, who talk these things over and decide them while wesleep. 

_Friday the Seventeenth_

We had to dig in, like bears, for two whole days while the first realsnow-storm of the winter raged outside. But the skies have cleared, the wind has gone, and the weather is crystal-clear again. Dinkie andPoppsy, furred to the ears, are out on the drifts learning to use thesnow-shoes which Percy and Olga sent down to them for Christmas. Dinkie has made himself a spear by lashing his broken-bladedjack-knife to the handle of my headless dutch-hoe and has convertedhimself into a stealthy Iluit stalking a polar bear in the form ofpoor old Scotty, who can't quite understand why he is being driven sorelentlessly from crevice to Arctic crevice. They have also built anigloo, and indulged in what is apparently marriage by capture, withthe reluctant bride making her repeated escape by floundering overdrifts piled even higher than the fence-tops. It makes me hanker toget my own snow-shoes on my moccasined feet again and go traffickingover that undulating white world of snow, where barb-wire means nomore than a line-fence in Noah's Flood. No one could remain morose, in weather like this. You must dress for it, of course, since thatarching blue sky has sword-blades of cold sheathed in its velvety softazure. But it goes to your head, like wine, and you wonder what makesyou feel that life is so well worth living. 

_Tuesday, the Twenty-First_

The armistice continues. And I continue to sit on my keg of powder andsing "_O Sole Mio_" to the northern moon. 

I have had Whinstane Sandy build a toboggan-slide out of the oldbinder-shed, which has been pretty well blown to pieces by lastsummer's wind-storms. He picked out the soundest of the two-by-foursand made a framework which he boarded over with the best of theweather-bleached old siding. For when you haven't the luxury of a hillon your landscape, you can at least make an imitation one. Whinnieeven planed the board-joints in the center of the runway andcounter-sunk every nail-head--and cussed volubly when he pounded hisheavily mittened thumb with the hammer. The finished structure couldhardly be called a thing of beauty. We have only one of thestable-ladders to mount it from the rear, and instead of toboggans wehave only Poppsy's home-made hand-sleigh and Dinkie's somewhatdilapidated "flexible coaster. " But when water had been carried outto that smooth runway and the boards had been coated with ice, likebrazil-nuts _glacé_, and the snow along the lower course had been wellpacked down, it at least gave you a run for your money. 

The tip-top point of the slide couldn't have been much more thanfourteen or fifteen feet above the prairie-floor, but it seemedperilous enough when I tried it out--much to the perturbation ofWhinstane Sandy--by lying stomach-down on Dinkie's coaster and lettingmyself shoot along that well-iced incline. It was a kingly sensation, that of speed wedded to danger, and it took me back to Davos at abreath. Then I tried it with Dinkie, and then with Poppsy, and thenwith Poppsy and Dinkie together. We had some grand old tumbles, in theloose snow, and some unmentionable bruises, before we becamesufficiently expert to tool our sleigh-runners along their propertrail. But it was good fun. The excitement of the thing, in fact, rather got into my blood. In half an hour the three of us were coveredwith snow, were shouting like Comanches, and were having an altogetherwild time of it. There was climbing enough to keep us warm, for allthe sub-zero weather, and I was finally allowed to escape to the houseonly on the promise that I risk my neck again on the morrow. 

_Friday the Twenty-Fourth_

My Dinkie's secret is no longer a secret. It divulged itself to meto-day with the suddenness of a thunder-clap. _Peter Ketley has beenback at Alabama Ranch for nearly three weeks. _

I was out with the kiddies this afternoon, having another wild time onthe toboggan-slide, dressed in an old Mackinaw of Dinky-Dunk's buckledin close around my waist and a pair of Whinnie's heaviest woolen socksover my moccasins and a mangy old gray-squirrel cap on by head. Thechildren looked like cherubs who'd been rolled in a flour-barrel, withtheir eyes shining and their cheeks glowing like Richmond roses, but Imust have looked like something that had been put out to frighten thecoyotes away. At any rate, there we were, all squealing like pigs andall powdered from tip to toe with the dry snow and all looking likePiutes on the war-path. And who should walk calmly about the corner ofthe buildings but Peter himself!

My heart stopped beating and I had to lean against the end of thetoboggan-slide until I could catch my breath. 

He called out, "Hello, youngsters!" as quietly as though he had seenus all the day before. I said "Peter!" in a strangled sort of whisper, and wondered what made my knees wabble as I stood staring at him asthough he had been a ghost. 

But Peter was no ghost. He was there before me, in the body, stillsmoking his foolish little pipe, wearing the familiar old coonskin capand coat that looked as though the moths had made many a Roman holidayof their generously deforested pelt. He took the pipe out of his mouthas he stepped over to me, and pulled off his heavy old gauntlet beforehe shook hands. 

"Peter!" I repeated in my ridiculous small whisper. 

He didn't speak. But he smiled, a bit wistfully, as he stared down atme. And for just a moment, I think, an odd look of longing came intohis searching honest eyes which studied my face as though he werecounting every freckle and line and eyelash there. He continued toX-ray me with that hungry stare of his until I took my hand away andcould feel the blood surging back to my face. 

"It's a long time, " he said as he puffed hard on his pipe, apparentlyto keep it from going out. The sound of his voice sent a littlethrill through my body. I felt as rattle-headed as a rabbit, and wasglad when Dinkie and Poppsy captured him by each knee and hung on likecatamounts. 

"Where did you come from?" I finally asked, trying in vain to be ascollected as Peter himself. 

Then he told me. He told me as nonchalantly as though he were givingme a piece of news of no particular interest. He had rather adifficult book to finish up, and he concluded the quietness of AlabamaRanch would suit him to a T. And when spring came he wanted to have alook about for a nest of the whooping crane. It has been rather ararity, for some sixteen or seventeen years, this whooping crane, andthe American Museum was offering a mighty handsome prize for aspecimen. Then he was compelled to give his attention to Dinkie andPoppsy, and tried the slide a couple of times, and announced that ourcoaster was better than the chariot of Icarius. And by this time I hadrecovered my wits and my composure and got some of the snow off myMackinaw. 

"Have I changed?" I asked Peter as he turned to study my face for thesecond time. 

"To me, " he said as he brushed the snow from his gauntlets, "you arealways adorable!"

"_Verboten!_" I retorted to that, wondering why anything so foolishcould have the power to make my pulses sing. 

"Why?" he asked, as his eyes met mine. 

"For the same old reason, " I told him. 

"Reasons, " he said, "are like shoes: Time has the trick of wearingthem out. "

"When that happens, we have to get new ones, " I reminded him. 

"Then what is the new one?" he asked, with an unexpectedly solemn lookon his face. 

"My husband has just asked me to join him in Calgary, " I said, releasing my bolt. 

"Are you going to?" he asked, with his face a mask. 

"I think I am, " I told him. For I could see, now, how Peter's returnhad simplified the situation by complicating it. Already he had mademy course plainer to me. I could foresee what this new factor wouldimply. I could understand what Peter's presence at Alabama Ranch wouldcome to mean. And I had to shut my eyes to the prospect. I was stillthe same old single-track woman with a clear-cut duty laid out beforeher. There were certain luxuries, for the sake of my own soul's peace, I could never afford. 

"Why are you going back to your husband?" Peter was asking, with realperplexity on his face. 

"Because he needs me, " I said as I stood watching the children goracing down the slide. 

"Why?" he asked, with what impressed me as his first touch ofharshness. 

"Must I explain?" I inquired with my own first movement inself-defense, for it had suddenly occurred to me that any suchexplaining would be much more difficult than I dreamed. 

"Of course not, " said Peter, changing color a little. "It's only thatI'm so tremendously anxious to--to understand. "

"To understand what?" I questioned, both hoping and dreading that hewould go on to the bitter end. 

"That _you_ understand, " was his cryptic retort. And for once in hislife Peter disappointed me. 

"I can't afford to, " I said with an effort at lightness which seemedto hurt him more than it ought. Then I realized, as I stood looking upinto his face, that I was doing little to merit that humble andmagnificent loyalty of Peter's. _He_ would play fair to the end. Hewas too big of heart to think first of himself. It was _me_ he wasthinking of; it was _me_ he wanted to see happy. But I had my own roadto go, and no outsider could guide me. 

"It's no use, Peter, " I said as I put my mittened hand on hisgauntleted arm without quite knowing I was doing it. And I went on towarn him that he must not confront me with kindness, that I was a gooddeal like an Indian's dog which neither looks for kindness norunderstands it. He laughed a trifle bitterly at that and reminded me, as he stood staring at me, of a Pribilof seal staring into an Arcticsun. Then he said an odd thing. "I wish I could make it a bit easierfor you, " he remarked as impersonally as though he were meditatingaloud. 

I asked him why he said that. He evasively explained that he thoughtit was because I had what the Romans called _constantia_. So I askedhim to explain _constantia_. And he said, with a shrug, that we mightregard it as firm consideration of a question before acting on it. Iexplained, at that, that it wasn't a matter of choice, but ofcharacter. He was willing to acknowledge that I was right. But beforethat altogether unsatisfactory little debate was over Peter made mepromise him one thing. He has made me promise that before I leave wehave a tramp over the prairie together. And we have agreed that Sundaywould be as good a day as any. 

_Saturday the Twenty-Fifth_

I have sent word to Duncan to expect me in Calgary as soon as I canget things ready. My decision is made. And it is final. Two ghostlyhands have reached out and turned me toward my husband. One is thePast. The other is the Proprieties. If life out here were a littlemore like the diamond-dyed Westerns, Peter Ketley and Duncan McKailwould fight with hammerless Colts, the victor would throw me over thehorn of his saddle, and vanish in a cloud of dust, while Struthers wasturning Casa Grande into a faro-hall and my two kiddies were busyholding up the Elk Crossing stage-coach. 

But life, alas, isn't so dramatic as we dream it. It cross-hobbles usand hog-ties us and leaves us afraid of our own wilted impulses. Ihave a terror of failure. And it's plain enough I have only onemission on God's green footstool. I'm a home-maker, and nothing more. I'm a home-maker confronted by the last chance to make good at my oneand only calling. And whatever it costs, I'm going to make my husbandrecognize me as a patient and long-suffering Penelope. .. . 

But enough of the rue! To-morrow I'm going snow-shoeing with Peter. I'm praying that the weather will be propitious. I want one of oursparkling-burgundy days with the sun shining bright and a nip in theair like a stiletto buried in rose leaves. For it may be the last timein all my life I shall walk on the prairie with my friend, PeterKetley. The page is going to be turned over, the candle snuffed out, and the singing birds of my freedom silenced. I have met my Rubicon, and it must be crossed. But last night, for the first time in a month, I plastered enough cold cream on my nose to make me look like abuttered muffin, and rubbed enough almond-oil meal on my arms to makethem look like a miller's. And I've been asking myself if I'm thesedate old lady life has been trying to make me. There are certainPacific Islands, Gershom tells me, where the climate is so stable thatthe matter of weather is never even mentioned, where the people whobathe in that eternal calm are never conscious of the conditionssurrounding them. That's the penalty, I suppose, that humanity paysfor constancy. There are no lapses to record, no deviations to beaccounted for, no tempests to send us tingling into the shelters ofwonder. And I can't yet be quite sure whether this rebellious oldheart of mine wants to be a Pacific Islander or not. 

_Monday the Twenty-Seventh_

Peter and I have had our tramp in the snow. It wasn't a sunny day, asI had hoped. It was one of those intensely cold northern days withoutwind or sun, one of those misted days which Balzac somewhere describesas a beautiful woman born blind. It was fifty-three below zero when weleft the house, with the smoke going up in the gray air as straightand undisturbed as a pine-tree and the drifts crunching like drycharcoal under our snow-shoes. We were woolened and mittened andcapped and furred up to the eyes, however, and I was warmer than I'vebeen many a time on Boston Common in March, even though we did looklike a couple of deep-sea divers and steamed like fire-engines when webreathed. 

We tramped until we were tired, swung back to Casa Grande, and Petercame in for a cup of tea and then trudged off to Alabama Ranch again. And that was the lee and the long of it, as the Irish say. What did wetalk about? Heaven knows what we didn't talk about! Peter told meabout a rancher named Bidwell, north of The Crossing, being foundfrozen to death in a snow-drift, frozen stiff, with the horse stillstanding and the rider still sitting upright in the saddle. He saidthere was a lot of rot talked about the great clean outdoors. Thesentimentalists found that they naturally felt a bit niftier in freshair, but the great outdoors, according to Peter, is an arena ofendless murder and rapine and warfare, and the cleanest acre of forestor prairie under the sun somewhere has its stains of blood and itsrecord of cruelty. We talked about Susie and the negative phrasing ofthe ten moral laws and the Horned Dinosaur from Sand Hill Creek (whosebones Peter reckoned to be at least three million years old) and themarriage customs of the Innuits. And we talked about Matzenauer andKreisler and the best cure for chilblains and about Gershom and Poppsyand Dinkie--but most of all about Dinkie. 

Peter asked me if I'd seen Dinkie's school essays on _The Flag_ and_The Capture of Quebec_, and rather surprised me by handing overcrumpled copies of the same, Dinkie having proudly despatched thesemasterpieces all the way to Philadelphia for his "Uncle Peter's"approval. It hurt me, for just one foolish fraction of a second, tothink my boy had confidences with an outsider which he could not havewith his own mother. And then I remembered that Peter wasn't anoutsider. I realized how much he had brought into my laddie's life, how much, in a different way, he had brought into my own. I even triedto tell him about this. But he stopped me short by saying something inLatin which he later explained meant "by taking the middle course weshall not go amiss. " So I came back to Casa Grande, not exactly with afeeling of frustration, but with a feeling of possibilities withheldand issues deferred. It was a companionable enough tramp, I suppose. But I'm afraid I was a disappointment to Peter. His gaiety impressedme as a bit forced. I am slightly mystified by his refusal, whiletaking serious things seriously, to take anything tragically. Even attea, with all its air of the valedictory hanging over us, he was niceand gay, like the Christmas beeves the city butchers stick paperrosettes into, or the circus-band playing like mad while the tumblerwho has had a fall is being carried out to the dressing-tent. Petereven offhandedly inquired, as he was going, if he might have Scotty totake care of, provided it was not expedient to take Dinkie's dogalong to Calgary with us. .. . I'm not quite certain--I may be wrong, but there are moments, odd earthquakey moments, when I have asuspicion that Peter will be keeping more than Scotty after we'vetrekked off to Calgary!

_Saturday the Fourth_

This tearing up of roots is a much sorrier business than I hadimagined. And more difficult. I find it hard to know what to take andwhat to leave behind. And there is so much to be thought of, so muchto be arranged for, so much to be done. I have had to write Duncan andtell him I'll be a few days later than I intended. My biggest problemhas been with Whinstane Sandy and Struthers. I called them in and hada talk with them and told them I wanted them to keep Casa Grande goingthe same as ever. Then I made myself into the god from the machine bycalmly announcing the only way things could be arranged would be forthe two of them to get married. 

Struthers, at this suggestion, promptly became as coy as apartridge-hen. Whinnie, of course, remained Scottish and canny. Hebecame more shrewdly magnanimous, however, after we'd had a bit oftalk by ourselves. "Weel, I'll tak' the woman, rather than see herfrettin' hersel' to death!" he finally conceded, knowing only toowell he'd nest warm and live well for the rest of his days. He'd beenhoping, he confessed to me, that some day he'd get back to that claimof his up in the Klondike. But he wasn't so young as he once was. Andperhaps Dinkie, when he was grown to a man, could go up and look afterhis rights. 'Twould be a grand journey, he averred with a sigh, for ahigh-spirited lad turned twenty. 

"I'll be stayin' with Pee-Wee and the old place here, " concludedWhinstane Sandy, giving me his rough old hand as a pledge. And withtears in my eyes I lifted that faithful old hand up to my lips andkissed it. Whinnie, I knew, would die for me. But he would pass awaybefore he'd be willing to put his loyalty and his courage and hiskind-heartedness into pretty speeches. Struthers, on the other hand, has become too flighty to be of much use to me in my packing. She hasplunged headlong into a riot of baking, has sent for a fresh supply ofsage tea, and is secretly perusing a dog-eared volume which I havereason to know is _The Marriage Guide_. 

Gershom, all things considered, is the most dolorous member of ourhome circle. He says little, but inspects me with the wounded eyes ofa neglected spaniel. He will stay on at Casa Grande until the Easterholidays, and then migrate to the Teetzels'. As for Dinkie and Poppsy, they are too young to understand. The thought of change excites them, but they have no idea of what they are leaving behind. 

Last night, when I was dog-tired after my long day's work, Iremembered about Dinkie's school-essays and took them out to read. Andhaving done so, I realized there was something sacred about them. Theygave me a glimpse of a groping young soul reaching up toward thelight. 

"We have a Flag, " I read, "to thrill our bones and be prod of and noman boy woman or girl" (and the not altogether artless _diminuendo_did not escape me!) "should never let it drag in the dust. It flotesat the bow of our ships and waves from the top of most post officesetc. And now we have a flag and a flag staf in front of our school andon holdays and when every grate man dies we put said flag up at hafmast. .. . It is the flag of the rich and the poor, the flag of ourcountry which all of whose citizens have a right to fly, the hig"(obviously meant for _high_) "and the low, the rich and the poor. Andwe must not only keep our flag but blazen it still further with deedsnobely done. If ever you have to shed your blood for your countryremeber its for the nobelest flag that flies the same being an emblenof our native land to which it represens and stands in high esteem bythe whole people of a country. " . .. God bless his patriotic littlebones! My bairn knew what he was trying to get at, but it's plain hedidn't quite know how to get there. 

But the drama of the Capture of Quebec plainly put him on easierground. For here was a story worth the telling. And what could be moreglorious than the death of Wolfe as I see it through my littleDinkie's eyes?

For I read: "The french said Wolfe" (_can_ has first been written andthen scratched out and _would_ substituted) "never get up that rivverbut Wolfe fooled them with a trick by running the french flag up onhis shipps so the french pilots without fear padled out and come abordwhen Wolfe took them prissoners and made them pilot the english shipssafe to the iland of Orlens. He wanted to capsture the city of Quebecwithout distroiting it. But the clifs were to high and the braveMontcalm dified Wolfe who lost 400 men and got word Amherst could notcome and so himself took sick and went to bed. But a desserter fromthe french gave Wolfe the pass word and when his ships crept furtherup the rivver in the dark a french senntry called out qui vive and oneof Wolfe's men who spoke french well ansered la france and the senntrysaid to himself they was french ships and let them go on. Next dayWolfe was better and saw a goat clime up the clifs near the plains ofAbraham and said where a goat could go he could go to. So he forgotbeing sick and desided to clime up Wolfe's cove which was not thencalled that until later. It was a dark night and they went in rowboats with all the oars mufled. It was a formadible sight that wouldhave made even bolder men shrink with fear. But it was the braveHiglanders who lead with their muskits straped to their sholdierscliming up the steep rock by grabbing at roots of trees and shrubbsand not a word was wispered but the french senntrys saw the treemoving and asked qui vive again. The same sholdier who once studdiedhard and lernt french said la france as he had done before and theygot safe to the top and faced the city. At brake of day they stoodface to face, french and english. But Montcalm marched out to cut themoff there and Wolfe lined his men up in a line and said hold your fireuntil they are within forty paces away from us. The french causedmany causilties but the english never wavered. Montcalm still on horseback reseaved a mortal wound, he would of fell off if two of his tallgranadeers hadn't held him up and Wolfe too was shot on the wirst butwent right on. Again he was shot this time more fataly and as theywere laying him down one of the men exclaimed See how they run. Whorun murmurred the dieing Wolfe. The enemy sir replied the man. Then Idie happy said Generral Wolfe and with a great sigh rolled over on hisside and died. .. . And when the doctor told Montcalm he could only livea few hours he said God be prased I shall not live to see Quebec fall. Brave words like those should not be forgoten and what Wolfe said wasjust as brave. No more fiting words could be said by anybody thanthose he said in the boats with the mufled oars that night that thepaths of glory leed but to the grave. " . .. 

I have folded up the carefully written pages, reverently, rememberingmy promise to return them to Peter. But for a while at least I shallkeep them with me. They have set me thinking, reminding me how timeflies. Here is my little boy, grown into an historian, sagelyphilosophizing over the tragedies of life. My wee laddie, expressinghimself through the recorded word. .. . It seems such a short time agothat he was taking his first stumbling steps along the dim hallways oflanguage. I have been turning back to the journal I began shortlyafter his birth and kept up for so long, the naïve journal of a youngmother registering her wonder at the unfolding mysteries of life. Itbecame less minute and less meticulous, I notice, as the years slippedpast, and after the advent of Poppsy and Pee-Wee the entries seem abit hurried and often incoherent. But I have dutifully noted how myDinkie first said "Ah goom" for "All gone, " just as I have fondlyremarked his persistent use of the reiterative intensive, with carefulcitations of his "da-da" and his "choo-choo car, " and a "bow-wow" asapplied to any living animal, and "wa-wa" for water, and "me-me" formilk, and "din-din" for dinner, and going "bye-bye" for going to sleepon his little "tum-tum. " I even solemnly ask, forgetting my MaxMüller, what lies at the root of this strange reduplicative process. Then I come to where I have set down for future generations themomentous fact that my Dinkie first said "let's playtend" for "let'spretend, " and spoke of "nasturtiums" as "excursions, " and announcedthat he could bark loud enough to make Baby Poppsy's eyes "bug out"instead of "bulge out. " And I come again to where I haveaffectionately registered the fact that my son says "set-sun" for"sunset" and speaks of his "rumpers" instead of his "rompers, " andcoins the very appropriate word "downer" to go with its sister word of"upper" and describes his Mummy as "_wearing_ Daddy's coffee-cup" whenhe really meant _using_ Daddy's coffee-cup. 

It all seems very fond and foolish now, just as at one time it allseemed very big and wonderful. And I remember schooling my Poppsy tosay "Daddy's all sweet" and how her little tongue, stumbling over thesibilant, converted it into the non-complimentary "Daddy's all feet, "which my Dinky-Dunk so scowlingly resented. And I have even compiled alist of Dinkie's earliest "howlers, " from the time he was firstinterested in Adam and Eve and asked to be told about "The Garden ofSweden" until he later explained one of Poppsy's crying-spells byannouncing she had dug a hole out by the corral and wanted to bring itinto the house. I used to smile a bit skeptically over thesetongue-twists of children, but now I know they are re-born with eachnew generation, the same old turns of thought and the same old kinksof utterance. I don't know why, but there is even a touch of sadnessabout the old jokes now. The patina of time gathers upon them andmellows them and makes me realize they belong to the past--the pastwith its pain and its joy, that can never come back to mortal mothersagain. 

_Monday the Thirtieth_

"We die a little, when we go away. " How true it is! By to-morrow wewill be gone. My heart is heavy as lead. I go about, doing things forthe last time, looking at things for the last time, and pretending tobe as matter-of-fact as a tripper breaking camp. But there's alaryngitis lump in my throat and there are times when I'm glad I'malmost too busy to think. 

I was hoping that the weather would be bad, as it ought to at thistime of the year, so that I might leave my prairie with some lessenedpang of regret. But the last two days have been miraculously mild. AChinook has been blowing, the sky has been a palpitating soft dome ofazure, and a winey smell of spring has crept over the earth. .. . To-night, knowing it was the last night, I crept out to say good-by tomy little Pee-Wee asleep in his lonely little bed. It was a perfectnight. The Lights were playing low in the north, weaving together in atangle of green and ruby and amethyst. The prairie was very still. The moonlight lay on everything, thick and golden and soft withmystery. I knelt beside Pee-Wee's grave, not in bitterness, but bathedin peace. I knelt there and prayed. 

It frightened me a little, when I looked up, to see Peter standingbeside the little white fence. I thought, at first, that he was aghost, he stood so still and he seemed so tall in the moonlight. 

"I'll watch your boy, " he said very quietly, "until you come back. "

He made me think of the Old Priest in _The Sorrowful Inheritance_. Heseemed so calmly benignant, so dependable, so safe in his simpleother-worldliness. 

"Oh, Peter!" was all I could say as I moved toward him in themoonlight. He nodded, as much to himself as to me, as he took my handin his. I felt a great ache, which was not really an ache, and a newkind of longing which never before, in all my life, I had nursed orknown. I must have moved closer to Peter, though I could feel his handpull itself away from mine. It made me feel terribly alone in theworld. 

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-by?" I cried out, with my hand onhis shoulder. 

Peter shook his head from side to side, very slowly. 

"_Verboten!_" he said as he put his hand over the hand which I had puton his shoulder. 

"But I may never come back. Peter!" I whispered, feeling the tears goslowly down my wet cheek. 

Peter took my unsteady fingers and placed them on the white pickets ofthe little rectangular fence. 

"You'll come back, " he said very quietly. And when I looked up he hadturned away. 

I could see him walking off in the yellow moonlight with his shouldersback and his head up. He walked slowly, with an odd wading movement, like a man walking through water. I was tempted, for a moment, to callafter him. But some power that was not of me or any part of meprompted me to silence. I stood watching him until he seemed a movingshadow along the level floor of the world flooded withprimrose-yellow, until he became a shifting stroke of umber on abackground of misty gold. I stood looking after him as he passed away, out of my sight, and far, far off to the north a coyote howled andover Casa Grande I could see a thin pennon of chimney-smoke going uptoward Arcturus. .. . Good-by, Peter, and God bless you. .. . 

Unlimited, indeed, is the power of Eros. For when I went to slipquietly into the house, I found Whinnie and Struthers seated togetherbeside the kitchen range. And Struthers was reading _Tam O'Shanter_aloud to her laird. 

"Read slow, noo, lassie, an' tak' it a' in, " said the placidlytriumphant voice of Whinstane Sandy, "for it'll be lang before ye kenits like!"

_Thursday the Seventeenth_

The migration has been effected . .. I am alone in my room, I have twoand three-quarters trunks unpacked, and I feel like a President's wifethe night after Inauguration. It is well past midnight, but I am tootired and too unsettled to sleep. Things turn out so differently towhat one expects! And all change, to the home-staying heart, can be soabysmally upsetting!. .. 

We were a somewhat disheveled and intimidated flock when we emergedfrom our train and found Duncan awaiting us with an amazingly bigtouring-car which, as he explained with a short laugh at my gape ofwonder, the Barcona Mines would pay for in a week. 

"It's no piker you're pulling with now, " he exclaimed as we climbedstiff and awkward into that deep-upholstered grandeur on wheels. Hesaid that the children had grown but would have to be togged out withsome new duds--little knowing how I had stayed up until long pastmidnight mending and pressing and doing my best to make my bucolicoffspring presentable. And he told me it was _some_ city I had cometo, as I'd very soon see for myself. And it was _some_ shack he'dcorralled for his family, he added with a chuckle of pride. 

I tried to be interested in the skyscrapers he showed me along EighthAvenue, and the Palliser, and the concreted subway, and the Rockies, in the distance, with the wine-glow on their snow-clad peaks. Andwhile I did my best to shake off the Maud-Muller feeling which wascreeping over me, by studying the tranquillizingly remotemountain-tops, Duncan confided to me that he had first said: "Fiftythousand or bu'st!" But two months ago he had amended that to "Ahundred thousand or bu'st!" and now he had his reasons for saying, with his jaw set: "Just a cool quarter of a million, before I quitthis game!"

It was for us, I told myself as I looked down at my kiddies, that theDour Man behind the big mahogany wheel was fighting. This, I felt, should bring me happiness, and a new sense of security. And it wasonly because my stomach was empty, I tried to assure myself, that mypoor old prairie heart felt that way. I should have been happy, for Iwas going to a brand-new home--and it was one of those foot-hill lateafternoons that make you think of the same old razor-blade muffled upin the same old panne-velvet, an evening of softness shot through witha steely sharpness. There was a Chinook arch of Irish point-lace stillin the sky, very much like the one I had left behind me, and the skyitself was a canopy of robin-egg blue _crêpe de chine_ hemmed withsalmon pink. 

But as we whirled up out of the city into the higher ground of someboulevarded and terraced residential district the evening air seemedcolder and the solemn old Rockies toward the west took on an air oflonesomeness. It made the thought of home and open fires and quietrooms very welcome. The lights came out along the asphalted streets, spangling the slopes of that sedate new suburb with rectangular linesof brilliants. Duncan, in answer to the questions of the children, explained that he was taking the longer way round, so as to give usthe best view of the house as we drove in. 

"Here we are!" he exulted as we slowed down and turned into a crescentlined with baby poplar and Manitoba maple. 

I leaned out and saw a big new house of tapestry brick, looking oddlypalatial on its imposing slope of rising ground. My husband stopped, in fact, midway in a foolishly pillared gate that bisected a longarray of cobble-stone walls, so that we might get a look at thegardens. They seemed very new gardens, but much of their newness waslost in that mercifully subduing light in which I saw trim-paintedtrellises and sepulchral white flower-urns and pergolas not yetsoftened with creepers. There was also a large iron fountain, paintedwhite, which Duncan apparently liked very much, from the way he lookedat it. From two of the chimneys I could see smoke going up in thequiet air. In the windows I could see lights, rose-shaded and warm, and beyond the shrubbery somewhere back in the garden a workman wasdriving nails. His hammer fell and echoed like a series ofrifle-shots. From the garage chimney, too, came smoke, and it wasplain from the sounds that somebody inside was busy tuning up acar-engine. 

I sat staring at the grounds, at the cobble-stone walls, at thetapestry-brick house with the high-shouldered French cornices. Itbegan to creep over me how it meant service, how it meant protection, how it meant guarded lives for me and mine, how it stood an amazinglycomplicated piece of machinery which took much thought to organize andmuch money to maintain. And the mainspring behind it all, Iremembered, was the man sitting at the mahogany wheel so close to me. Light and warmth and comfort and safety--they were all to come fromthe conceiting and the struggling of my Dour Man, fighting for anempty-headed family who were scarcely worth it. He was, after all, thestoker down in the hole, and without him everything would stop. Sowhen I saw that he was studying my face with that intent sidelongglance of his, I reached over and put my hand on his knee, as I haddone so often, in the old days. 

He looked down, at that, with what was almost an appearance ofembarrassment. 

"I want to play my part, " I said with all the earnestness of myearnest old heart, as he let in his clutch and we started up thewinding drive. 

"It ought to be a considerable part, " he said as we drew up under abone-white porte-cochère where a small-bodied Jap stood respectfullyimpassive and waiting to open the door for us. 

My husband got down out of the car. I sat wondering why I should feelso much like a Lady Jane Grey approaching the headsman's _makura_. 

"Come on, kids!" Duncan called out with a parade of joviality, like acheer-leader who realized that things weren't going just right. ForDinkie, I could see, was shrinking back in the padded seat. Hisunderlip was trembling a trifle as he sat staring at the strange newhouse. But Poppsy, true little woman that she was, smiledappreciatively about at the material grandeurs which confronted her. If she'd had a tail, I'm sure, she'd have been wagging it. And this sotickled her dad that he lifted her out of the car and carried herbodily and triumphantly up the steps. 

I waited for Dinkie, whose eye met mine. I did my best to show myteeth, that he might understand how everything was eventually to befor the best. But his face was still clouded as we climbed the stepsand passed under the yoke. 

The little Jap, whose name, I have since found out, is Tokudo, bowed ajack-knife bow and said "_Irashai_" as I passed him. And "_Irashai_" Ihave also discovered, is perfectly good Japanese for "Welcome. "

We had dinner at seven. It was a well-ordered meal, but it went offrather dismally. I was depressed, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, and the children were tired, and Duncan, I'm afraid, was a bitdisappointed in us all. Tokudo had brought cocktails for us, andDuncan, seeing I wasn't drinking mine, stowed both away in hishonorable stomach. He ate heartily, I noticed, and gave scantappearance of a man pining away with a broken heart. After dinner hesat back and bit off the end of a cigar. 

"This is my idea of living, " he proclaimed as he sent a blue cloud uptoward the rather awful dome-light above the big table. "There's stirand movement here, all day long. Something more than sunsets to lookat! You'll see--something to fill up your day! Why, night seems tocome before I even know it. And before I'm out of bed I'm broodingover what's ahead of me for that particular date and day--Say, thatgirl of ours is falling asleep in her chair there!"

So I escaped and put the children to bed. And while thus engaged Idiscovered that some of Duncan's new friends were dropping in on him. I wanted to stay up-stairs, for my head was aching a lot and my heartjust a little, but Duncan called to me from the bottom of the stairs. So down I went, like a dutiful wife, to the room full of smoke andtalk, where two big men and one very thin woman in a baby-bear motorcoat were drinking Scotch highballs with my lord and master. They weregenial and jolly enough, but I couldn't understand their allusions andI couldn't see the points to their jokes. And they seemed to stay aninterminable length of time. I was secretly uncomfortable, until theywent, but I became still more uncomfortable after they had gone. 

For as we sat there together, in that oppressive big room, I maderather an awful discovery. I found that my husband and I had scarcelyanything we could talk about together. So I sat there, like analligator in a bayou, wondering why his rather flushed face should beturned toward me every now and then. 

My heart beat a little faster as I saw him take out his watch and windit up. 

"Let's go to bed, " he said as he pushed it back in his waistcoatpocket. My heart stopped beating altogether, for a moment or two. Ifelt like a slave-girl in a sheik's tent, like a desert-woman justsold into bondage. 

It was the smoky air and the highballs, I suppose, which left his eyesa little bloodshot as he turned slowly about and studied my face. Thenhe repeated what he had said before. 

"_I can't!_" I told him, with a foolish surge of terror. 

He sat quite a long time without speaking. I could see the corners ofthe Holbein-Astronomer mouth go down. 

"As you say, " he finally remarked, with a grim sort of quietness. Butevery bit of color had gone from his face. I was glad when Tokudo camein to take away the glasses. 

Duncan stood up, after the servant had gone again, and bowed to mevery solemnly. 

"_Oyasumi nasi_, " he said with a stabilizing ironic smile. 

"What does that mean?" I asked, doing my best to smile back at him. 

"That means 'sleep well, '" explained my husband. "But Tokudo wouldprobably translate it into 'Condescend to enjoy honorabletranquillity. '"

Instead of enjoying honorable tranquillity, however, I am sitting upinto the wee sma' hours of the night, patrolling the gloomy rampartsof my soul's unrest. 

_Wednesday the Twenty-Third_

This change to the city means a new life to my children. But I canalso see it means new dangers and new influences. The simplicity ofranch life has vanished. And Dinkie and Poppsy are already gettingacquainted with their neighbors. A Ford truck came within an inch ofrunning over Poppsy this morning. She has announced a curiosity toinvestigate ice-cream sodas, and Dinkie has proclaimed his intentionof going to the movies Saturday afternoon with Benny McArthur, thebanker's son in the next block. On Monday I'm to take my children toschool. "One of the finest school-buildings in all the West, " Duncanhas proudly explained. I can't help thinking of Gershom and his littlecubby-hole of a wooden building where he is even now so solemnly andyet so kind-heartedly teaching the three R's to a gathering of littleprairie outlaws. 

I shall have time on my hands, I see, for Hilton and his wife, ourEnglish gardener-chauffeur and our portly maid-of-all-work, prettywell cover what the wonderful Tokudo overlooks. And Tokudo _is_ awonder. That cat-footed little Jap does the ordering and cooking andserving; he answers the door and the telephone; he attends to the rugsand the hardwood floors; he rules over the butler's pantry andpolishes the silver and inspects the linen, and even keeps the keys toDuncan's carefully guarded wine-cellar, which the mistress of thehouse herself has not yet dared to invade. 

My husband seems to be very busy with his coal-mines and his otherinterests. He said last night that his idea of happiness is to be soimmersed in his work as to be unconscious of time and undisturbed byits passing. And he _has_ been happy, in that way. But Time, thatpatient remodeler of all things mortal, can still work while we sleep. And something has been happening, without Duncan quite knowing it. Hehas changed. He is older, for one thing. I don't mean that my husbandis an old man. But I can see a number of early-autumnal alterations inhim. He's a trifle heavier and stiffer. He's lost a bit of hisspringiness. And he seems to know it, in his secret heart of hearts, for he tries to make up for that loss with a sort of coercedblitheness which doesn't always carry. He affects a sort of creakingjauntiness which sometimes falls short of its aim. When he can'tclear the hurdle, I notice, he has the habit of whipping up his tiredspirits with a cocktail or a highball or a silver-fizz. But he ispreoccupied, at times. And at other times he is disturbinglyshort-tempered. He announced this morning, almost gruffly, that we'dhad about enough of this "Dinkie and Poppsy business, " and thechildren might as well be called by their real names. So I shall makeanother effort to get back to "Elmer" and "Pauline Augusta. " But Ifeel, in my bones, that those pompous appellatives will not be alwaysremembered. It has just occurred to me that my old habit of calling myhusband "Dinky-Dunk" has slipped away from me. Endearing diminutives, I suppose, are not elicited by polar bears. 

_Thursday the Thirty-First_

I don't quite know what's the matter with me. I'm like a cat in astrange garret. I don't seem to be fitting in. I sat at the piano lastnight playing "What's this dull town to me, Robin Adair?" And Duncan, with the fit and natural spirit of the home-booster, actively resentedthat oblique disparagement of his new business-center. He believesimplicitly in Calgary and its future. 

As for myself, I am rigidly suspending all judgments. I'm at leasttrying to play my part, even though my spirit isn't in it. There aretimes when I'm tempted to feel that a foot-hill city of this size isneither fish nor fowl. It impresses me as a frontier cow-town grownout of its knickers and still ungainly in its first long trousers. ButI can't help being struck by people's incorruptible pride in their owncommunity. It's a sort of religious faith, a fixed belief in thefuture, a stubborn optimism that is surely something more thanself-interest. It's the Dutch courage that makes deprivation and longwaiting endurable. 

It's the women, and the women alone, who seem left out of theprocession. They impress me as having no big interests of their own, so they are compelled to _playtend_ with make-believe interests. Theyrace like mad in the social squirrel-cage, or drug themselves withbridge and golf and the country club, or take to culture with acapital C and read papers culled from the Encyclopedias; or spendtheir husbands' money on year-old Paris gowns and make love to otherwomen's mates. The altitude, I imagine, has quite a little to do withthe febrile pace of things here. Or perhaps it's merely because I'm anold frump from a back-township ranch!

But I have no intention of trying to keep up with them, for I have aconstitutional liking for quietness in my old age. And I can't engrossmyself in their social aspirations, for I've seen a bit too much ofthe world to be greatly taken with the internecine jealousies of atwenty-year-old foot-hill town. My "day" in this aristocratic sectionis Thursday, and Tokudo this afternoon admitted callers from sevenclosed cars, two landaulets, three Detroit electrics and one hiredtaxi. I know, because I counted 'em. The children and I posed like aRaeburn group and did our best to be respectable, for Duncan's sake. But he seems to have taken up with some queer people here, people whodrop in at any time of the evening and smoke and drink and solemnlydiscuss how a shandygaff should be mixed and tell stories I wouldn'tcare to have the children hear. 

There's one couple Duncan asked me to be especially nice to, a Mr. AndMrs. Murchison. The latter, I find, is usually addressed as "Slinkie"by her friends, and the former is known as "Cattalo Charley" becausehe once formed a joint-stock company which was to make a fortuneinterbreeding buffalo and range-cattle, the product of that happyunion being known, I believe, as "cattalo. " Duncan calls him a"promoter, " but my earlier impression of him as a born gambler hasbeen confirmed by the report that he's interested in a lignitebriquetting company, that he's fathering a scheme, not only to raisestock-yard reindeer in the sub-Arctics but also to grow karakule sheepin the valleylands of the Coast, that he once sold mummy wheat atforty dollars a bushel, and that in the old boom days he promoted noless than three oil companies. And the time will come, Duncan avers, when that man will be a millionaire. 

As for "Slinkie, " his wife, I can't be quite sure whether I like heror not. I at least admire her audacity and her steel-trap quickness ofmind. She has a dead white skin, green eyes, and most wonderful hair, hair the color of a well-polished copper samovar. She is an extremelythin woman who affects sheathe skirts and rather reminds me of aboa-constrictor. She always reeks of _Apres londre_ and uses alip-stick as freely before the world as an orchestra conductor uses abaton or a street-sweeper a broom. She is nervous and sharp-tonguedand fearless and I thought, at first, that she was making a dead setat my Duncan. But I can now see how she confronts all men with thatsame dangerous note of intimacy. Her real name is Lois. She talksabout her convent days in Belgium, sings _risque_ songs in very badFrench, and smokes and drinks a great deal more than is good for her. In Vancouver, when informed that she was waiting for a street-car on anon-stop corner, she sat down between the tracks, with her back to theapproaching car. The motorman, of course, had to come to astop--whereupon she arose with dignity and stepped aboard. Duncan hastold me this story twice, and tends to consider Lois a reallywonderful character. I am a little afraid of her. She asked me theother day how I liked Calgary. I responded, according to Hoyle, thatI liked the clear air and the clean streets and the Rockies looking socompanionably down over one's shoulder. Lois hooted as she tapped acigarette end against her hennaed thumb-nail. 

"Just wait until the sand-storms, my dear!" she said as she struck amatch on her slipper-heel. 

_Saturday the Second_

My old friend Gershom has very slyly written a _rondeau_ to me. I havejust found it enclosed in my _Golden Treasury_, which he handed backto me that last night at Casa Grande. It's the first actual _rondeau_I ever had indited to my humble self, and while I'm a bit set up aboutit, I can't quite detach from Gershom's lines a vaguely obituarialatmosphere which tends to depress me. 

I can see that it may not be the best _rondeau_ in the world, but I'mgoing to keep it until my bones are dust, for good old Gershom's sake. And some day, when he marries the nice girl he deserves to marry, andhas a kiddy or two of his own, I'll shame his gray hairs by paradingit before his offspring! I have just been re-reading the lines, inGershom's copperplate script. They are as follows:

 _To C. McK. _

 _On Returning Her Copy of the Golden Treasury_

 This golden book, dear friend, wherein each line Holds close a charm for knowing eyes to meet, Holds doubly mystical and doubly sweet An inner charm no language may define:

 For o'er each page a woman's soul divine Bent low a space for kindred souls to greet, And here her eyes were lit with gladness fleet Because of songs that graced with rare design This book of thine!

 And now I give back into Beauty's hand Her borrowed songs, but I shall hold always Secret and safe from every care's demand, A flame of light to fill my emptier days, That quieter fellowship, which made a shrine This book of thine! G. B. 

_Tuesday the Fifth_

The weather is balmier, and just a tinge of green is creeping into thetan of the foot-hill slopes. Spring is coming again. 

I went shopping in the Hudson Bay Store yesterday and found it muchmore metropolitan than I had expected. And I find I am three wholelaps behind in that steeplechase known as Style. But I got a raft ofthings for Pauline Augusta, and a Boy Scout outfit for my laddie. 

One of the few women I like in Calgary is Dinkie's--I meanElmer's--new school-teacher. Her name is Lossie Brown and she is anearnest-eyed girl who's saving up to go to Europe some day and studyart. She's a trifle shy, and unmistakably moody, but her mind is asbright as a new pin. And some bright morning, when the rose ofwomanhood has really opened, she's going to wake up a howling beauty. I love her, too, for the interest she has taken in my boy, whom shereports as getting along much better than she had expected. So I haveasked her to write a little note to Gershom Binks, advising him ofhis ex-pupil's advance. For Lossie is a girl I'd like Gershom to know. And she has done this for me. I ask her over to the house as often asI can and yesterday I had Dinkie slip a little platinum-bandedfountain-pen, with a card, into the pocket of her rather threadbareulster. Duncan, however, is not in the least interested in Lossie. Hedespises what he calls insignificant people. 

On my way home from shopping I had Hilton drive me about some of theless-known parts of the city. And I have been compelled to recast someof my earlier impressions of Calgary. It is wonderful, in many ways, and some day, I can see, it will be beautiful, just as Lossie Brownwill some day be beautiful. 

In the first place, it is so happily situated, lying as it doeshalf-way between the mountains and the plain. And the blue Bow comesdancing so joyously down from the Rockies and the older city sleeps sohappily in the sunny crook of its valley-arm, while the newer suburbsseem to boil up and run over the surrounding hills like champagnebubbling over the rim of a glass. There are raw edges, of course, buttime will eventually attend to these. Now and then, between themotor-cars, you will see a creaking Red River cart. Next to anoffice-building of gray sandstone you're likely to spot what lookslike a squatter's wickyup of rusty galvanized iron. Yesterday, on ourmain street where the electric-cars were clanging and the limousineswere throwing their exhaust incense to the gods of the future, Icaught sight of a lonely and motionless figure, isolated in the midstof a newer world. It was the figure of a Cree squaw, blanketed andmany-wrinkled and unmistakably dirty, blinking at the devil-wagons andthe ceaseless hurry of the white man. And being somewhat Indianized, as my husband once assured me I was, I could sympathize with thatstolid old lady in the blanket. 

I'm even beginning to find that one can get tired of optimism, especially when it is being so plainly converted from a psychicabstraction into a municipal asset. There's a sort of communalChristian Science in this place which ordains that thought shall notdwell on such transient evils as drought or black rust or early frostor hail-storms or money stringencies. And there's a sort of youthfulgreediness in people's longing to live all there is of life to liveand to know all there is of life to know. For there is a limit to thesensations we can digest, just as there is a limit to the meat we candigest. And out here we have a tendency to bolt more than is good forus, to bolt it without pausing to get the true taste of it. The womenof this town remind me more and more of mice in an oxygen bell; theyrace round and round, drunk with an excitement they can't quiteunderstand, until they burn up their little lives the same as the miceburn up their little lungs. 

. .. I've had a letter from Whinstane Sandy to-day, writing aboutseed-wheat and the repairs for the tractor. It seems like a messagefrom another world. He reports that poor old Scotty is eating againand no longer mourns day in and day out for his lost master. And Mr. Ketley has very kindly brought over the liniment for Mudski'sshoulder. . .. Whatever I may be, or whatever I may have done, I feelthat I can still cleanse my heart by sacrifice. 

_Friday the Ninth_

One can get out of the habit, apparently, of having children about. Mykiddies, I begin to see, occasionally grate on Duncan. He broughttears to the eyes of Pauline Augusta yesterday by the way he scoldedher for using a lead-pencil on the living-room woodwork. And the nightbefore he shouted much strong language at Elmer for breaking awindow-pane in the garage with Benny McArthur's new air-gun. 

Elmer and his father, I'm afraid, have rather grown away from eachother. More than once I've caught Duncan staring at his son and heirin a puzzled and a slightly frustrated sort of way. And Elmer's soulpromptly becomes _incommunicado_ when his iron-browed pater is in theneighborhood. 

Duncan is very proud of his grand new house. He is anxious to build aconservatory out along the southwest wing. But he has asked how long aconservatory would last with two young mountain-goats gamboling alongits leads. .. . Lossie, little suspecting the pang she was giving me, laughingly showed me a manuscript which she found by accident in myDinkie's reader. It was a poem, dedicated to "D. O'L. " And written ina stiff little hand I read:

 "Your lips are lined with roses, Your eyes they shinne like gold If you call me from the sunlight, I'll answer from the cold. But I wonder why, Oh, why, You stay so far from me? If you whisper from the prarrie, I'll call from Calgary. "

"Won't it be wonderful, " said Lossie as I sat pondering over thosefoolish little lines, "won't it be wonderful, if Dinkie grows up to bea great poet?"

_Monday the Eleventh_

Elmer, _alias_ Dinkie, after many days' mourning for his lost Scotty, is consoling himself, as other men do, with a substitute. Last Fridayhe Brought home a flop-eared pup with a drooping tail and anindefinite ancestry, explaining that he had come into possession ofthe aforementioned animal by the duly delivered purchase-price ofthirty-seven cents. 

Remembering Minty and certain matters of the past, I was troubled inspirit. But I couldn't see why my son shouldn't have an animal tolove. And I have had Hilton fix a little box in one corner of thegarage for Dinkie's new pet, which he has christened Rowdy. 

Rowdy, I now see, is a canine of limited spirit and is not likely torepeat the offenses of Minty. But Dinkie really loves his new pup, despite the latter's indubitably democratic ancestry. And I begin tosuspect that my laddie's weakness for mongrels may arise from hisearlier experience with Duncan's blooded bulldog, which he struggledwith for three whole days, fondly and foolishly trying to teach thatstolid animal the art of "pointing. "

On Saturday Dinkie smuggled the verminous Rowdy to the upperbathroom and gave him a thorough but quite unrelished soaping . .. Dinkie, by the way, is now a "cub" in the Boy Scouts and afteradorning himself in khaki goes off on hikes and takes lessons inwoodcraft. Saturday the Scouts of his school marched behind a realband and Lossie and I sat in the car waiting for my laddie to appear. He wiggled one hand, and smiled sheepishly, as he caught sight of us. But he kept "eyes front" and refused to give any further sign as hemarched bravely on behind that brave music. He is learning the lawof the pack. For some first frail ideas of service are beginningto incubate in that egoistic little bean of his. And he's suffering, I suppose, the old contest between the ancestral lust to kill andthe new-born inclination to succor and preserve. That means he maysome day be "a gentleman. " And I've a weakness for that old Newmandefinition of a gentleman as one who never inflicts pain--"tendertowards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and mercifultowards the absurd"--conducting himself toward his enemy as if hewere some day to be his friend. And I also wish there were a fewmore of them in this hard old world of ours!

Speaking of gentlemen, there's a Captain Goodhue here whom I ratherlike. Lois Murchison brought us together in the tea-room of thePalliser. In more ways than one he reminds me of Peter. But CaptainGoodhue is a much older man, and is English, coming from a veryexcellent family in Sussex. He's one of those iron-gray ex-Army menwho still believe in a monocle and can be loyal to a queen even thoughshe wears a basque with darts in it. And he doesn't talk to a womanwith that ragging air of condescension which seems to be peculiar towestern American civilization. He is courteous and thoughtful andsincere, though I noticed that he winced a trifle when I suddenlyremembered, as he was taking his departure, that the McKails wereliving in what must have once been his house. He blinked, like awell-groomed old eagle, when I reminded him of this. I never dreamed, of course, that the subject would be painful to him. But it was anhonor, he acknowledged with a bow, to pass his household gods on to alady to whom so much had already been given. 

When I asked Lois about it, later on, she rather indifferentlyacknowledged that the old gentleman had been making a mess of hisdifferent business ventures. He was much better at golf than gettingin on the ground-floor of a land deal. He was too old fogy, saidSlinkie, to make good in the West. He still kept his head up, butthey'd pretty well picked him to the bones. .. . Lois, by the way, describes me as something new in her menagerie and drops in to see meat the most unexpected moments. Then her tongue goes like amower-knife. She is persuaded that I should permanent-wave my hair, lower my waist-line, and go in for amethysts. "And interest yourself, my dear, in an outside man or two, " she has sagely advised me. "Forhusbands, you'll find, always accept you at the other mutt'svaluation!"

I was tempted to make her open her jade-green eyes, for a moment, bytelling her I was already interested in an outside man or two and thatmy lord and master hadn't been much influenced by the extraneousappreciations. But I'm a little afraid of Slinkie and her serpent'stongue. And I'm a little afraid of this new circle into which myDuncan has so laboriously engineered himself. They more and moreimpress on my simple old prairie soul that the single-track woman isthe woman who gets most out of life, that there's nothing reallygreat and nothing really enduring that is not built on loyalty andtruth. Character is Fate, as I once before inscribed in this book ofmy life. And I've been sitting up to-night, while the eternal bridgegame is going on below, asking myself if all is well with ChaddieMcKail. Have I, or have I not, conceded too much? Am I turning intonothing more than a mush of concession? Haven't I been bribed bycomfort, and blinded to a situation which I am now almost afraid toface? Haven't I been selfishly scheming for the welfare of my childrenand endangering all their future and my own by the price I am paying?Haven't I been crazily manning a rickety old pump, trying to keepafloat a family hulk whose seams are wide open and whose timbers arewater-logged? And how long can this sort of thing go on? And what willbe the end of it?

I try to warn myself not to smash my goods to kill a rat, as theChinese say. I try to flatter myself that I am not lettingcircumstances stampede me into any hasty decision. There's many awoman, I suppose, with a husband whose legal promise has outlived hisloyalty. But all is not well here about my heart. I know that, by theway it keeps sending up little trial-balloons, to see which way thewind is really blowing. 

. .. And Sunday night Cattalo Charlie went home quite drunk. And ourlocal member, emboldened by his seventh highball, offhandedly invitedme to accompany him on a little run up to Banff, stabbing me with ahurt look when I told him I'd see when Duncan could get away from hiswork. .. . 

I wonder if spring is coming to Casa Grande? And at Alabama Ranch? Andare the pussy-willows showing in the slough-ends? And why doesn'tPeter Ketley ever write to me?

_Saturday the Sixteenth_

Lossie and Gershom, I find, have drifted into the habit of writing toeach other. It is, of course, all purely platonic and pedagogic, arising out of a common interest in my Dinkie's academic advancement. But Lossie borrowed Dinkie this morning to have a photograph takenwith him, one copy of which she has very generously promised to sendon to Gershom. .. . Struthers has sent me a very satisfactory reportfrom Casa Grande, which I dreamed last night had burned to the ground, compelling me and my kiddies to live in the old prairie-schooner, laboriously pulled about the prairie by Tithonus and Calamity Kate. And when I applied at Peter's door for a handful of meal for mystarving children, he called me worse than a fallen woman and drove meoff into the wilderness. 

Duncan asked me to-day if I'd motor up to the mines with him for theweek-end. I had to tell him that I'd promised to take Elmer andPauline Augusta to hear Kathleen Parlow and that it wouldn't seemquite fair to break my word. Duncan said that I was the best judge ofthat. Then he slammed a drawer shut and asked me, in his newer manner, how long I intended to pull this iceberg stuff. "For I can't see, " heconcluded after calling out for Tokudo to bring his hat and coat, "that I'm getting such a hell of a lot out of this arrangement!"

I asked him, as quietly as I could, what he expected of me. But Icould feel my heart pounding quick against my ribs. I am not, andnever pretended to be, any stained-glass saint. And there were a fewthings I felt it was about time to unload. But Tokudo cat-footed backwith the coat, and I could hear Lossie's clear laugh as she came inthrough the front door with the returning Dinkie, and some inner voicewarned me to hold my peace. So Duncan and I merely stood there staringat each other, for a moment or two, across an abysmal and unbridgeablegulf of silence. Then he strode out to his car without as much as ahowdy-do to the startled and slightly mystified Lossie. 

_Monday the Eighteenth_

I have just learned that we were blackballed from the Country Club. Myhusband, at least, has met with that experience. 

It was Lois who let the cat out of the bag. She wasn't clear on allthe details, but it was that old has-been of a Goodhue who was at thebottom of it all, according to the lady known as Slinkie. Duncan andhe had clashed, from the first. Then Duncan had bought up his paper, and compelled him to mortgage his home. It was because of something todo with the Barcona Mines directorate, Lois thought, that CaptainGoodhue had had Duncan blackballed when he applied for membership inthe Country Club, the Captain being vice-president of the originalholding company. Lois laughed none too pleasantly when she added thather Charley and my Duncan had joined hands to go after the old man'sscalp. And they had got it. They turned him inside out, before theygot through with him. They took his fore-lock and his teepee and hislast string of wampum. And the old snob, of course, would neverforgive them. 

. .. They took his fore-lock, and his teepee . .. And it was ChaddieMcKail and her bairns who were now housing warm in that capturedteepee! And all this toiling and moiling, on the part of my husband, all this scheming and intriguing and juggling with figures, had been acampaign for power, a plotting and working to get even with thishaughty old enemy who could carry his defeat so lightly! To beblackballed like that, I remembered, was to be proclaimed not agentleman. And it must have cut deep. At one time, I suppose, Duncanwould have called his monocled captain out. But men seem to fightdifferently nowadays. They fight differently, but no less grimly. AndDuncan, whether it is a virtue or a vice in his make-up, would alwaysbe a fighter. .. . Yet I have no sense of gratitude to Lois Murchisonfor depositing her painful truths in my lap. She warned me, in herartless soprano, that there wasn't much good in sentimentalizing thesituation. But she has thrown a shadow across the house which I wastrying to make into a home. Without quite knowing it, she hascheapened her life-mate in my eyes. Without quite intending it, shehas left my own husband more ignominious than he once stood. I wastrying hard to school myself into a respect for his materialsuccesses. I was struggling to excuse a great many things by theengrossing nature of his work. But the motive behind all his effortsseemed suddenly a sordid one, in many ways a mean one. 

I keep remembering what Lois said about not sentimentalizing asituation. But I'm not yet such a mush of concession that I can't tellblack from white. And there's some part of us, some vague butunescapable part of us, which we must respect, otherwise we have noright to walk God's good earth. .. . 

I want to get away, for a day or two, to think things out. I think, before Duncan gets back to-morrow, I shall take Poppsy and run up toBanff. I may get my view-point back. And the mountain quietness may dome good. .. . 

I keep having that same dull ache of disappointment which came to meas a girl, after I'd idolized a great man called Meredith and afterI'd almost prayed to a great poet called Browning, on finding that onewas so imperfectly monogamous and that the other philandered andtalked foolishly to women. I had thrust my girlish faith in theirhands, as so often befalls with the young, and they had betrayedit. .. . But for the second time since I married, I have been reading_Modern Love_. And I can almost forgive the Apollo of Box Hill forthat betrayal which he knew nothing about. 

_Thursday the Twenty-Eighth_

This is Thursday the twenty-eighth of April. I want to be sure ofthat. For there are very few things I can be sure of now. 

The bottom has fallen out of my world. I sit here, telling myself tobe calm. But it's not easy to sit quiet when you face the very worstthat all life could confront you with. _My Dinkie has run away. _

My boy has left me, has left his home, has vanished like smoke intothe Unknown. He is gone and I have no trace of him. 

I find it hard to write. Yet I _must_ write, for the mere expressionof what I feel tends to ease the ache. It helps to keep me sane. Andalready I realize I was wrong when I wrote "the very worst that alllife could confront you with. " For my laddie, after all, is not dead. He must still be alive. And while there's life, there's hope. 

I got back from Banff yesterday morning about nine, and Hilton wasthere with the car to meet me, as I had told him to be. I was anxiousto know at once if everything was all right, but I found it hard toput a question so personal before that impersonal-eyed Englishman. SoI strove to give my interrogation an air of the casual by offhandedlyinquiring: "How's Rowdy, Hilton?"

"Dead, ma'am, " was his prompt reply. 

This rather took my breath away. 

"Do you mean to say that Rowdy is _dead_?" I insisted, noticingPoppsy's color change as she listened. 

"Killed, ma'am, " said the laconic Hilton. 

"By whom?" I demanded. 

"Mr. Murchison, ma'am, " was the answer. 

"How?" I asked, feeling my vague dislike for that particular namesharpen up to something dangerously like hatred. 

"He always comes up the drive a bit fast-like, ma'am. He hit the pup, and that was the end of him!"

"Does Dinkie know?" was my first question, after that. 

"He _saw_ it, ma'am, " admitted my car-driver. 

"Saw what?"

"Saw Mr. Murchison throw the dog over the wall into the brush!"

"What did he say?"

"He swore a bit, ma'am, and then laughed, " admitted Hilton, after apause. 

"Dinkie laughed?" I cried, incredulous. 

"No; Mr. Murchison, ma'am, " explained Hilton. 

"What did Dinkie say?" I insisted. And again the man on thedriving-seat remained silent a moment or two. 

"It was what he _did_, ma'am, " he finally remarked. 

"What did he do?" I demanded. 

"Ran into the house, ma'am, and snatched the icepick off the kitchentable. Then he went to the big car like a mad 'un, he did. Poundedholes in every blessed tire with his pick!"

"And then what?" I asked, with my heart up in my throat. 

Hilton waited until he had taken a crowded corner before answering. 

"Then he found the dead dog, ma'am, and bathed it, and borrowed thegarden spade from me. Then he took it somewheres back in the ravineand buried it. I gave him the tool-box off the old roadster, to putwhat was left of the pup in. "

"And then?" I prompted, with a quaver in my voice I couldn't control. 

"He met Mr. Murchison coming out and he called him w'at I'd not liketo repeat, ma'am, until Mr. McKail stepped out to see what was wrong, and interfered. "

"_How_ did he interfere?" was my next question. 

"By taking the lad into the house, ma'am, " was my witness's retardedreply. 

"Then what happened?" I exacted. 

I waited, knowing what was coming, but I dreaded to hear it. 

"He gave him a threshing, ma'am, " I heard Hilton's voice saying, faraway, as though it came to me over a long-distance telephone on a wetnight. 

I sat rigid as we mounted American Hill. I sat rigid as we swerved inthrough the ridiculous manor-like gate and up the winding drive and inunder the ugly new porte-cochère. I didn't even wait for Poppsy as Igot out of the car. I didn't even speak to Tokudo as he ran mincinglyto take my things. I walked straight to the breakfast-room where I sawmy husband sitting at the end of the oblong white table, stirring acup of coffee with a spoon. 

"Where's Dinkie?" I asked, trying to keep my voice low but not quitesucceeding. 

Duncan looked up at me with a coldly meditative eye. 

"Where he usually is at this time of day, " he finally answered. 

"Where?" I repeated. 

"At school, of course, " admitted my husband as he reached out for apiece of buttered toast. He was making a pretense at being verytranquil-minded. But his hand, I noticed, wasn't so steady as it mighthave been. 

"Is he all right?" I demanded, with my voice rising in spite ofmyself. 

"Considerably better, I imagine, than he has been for some time, " wasthe deliberate answer from the man with the bloodshot eyes at the endof the table. 

"What do you mean by that?" I asked. And any one of intelligence, Isuppose, could see I was making that question a challenge. 

"I mean that since you saw him last he's had a damned good whaling, "said Duncan, with his jaw squared, so that he reminded me of aKing-Lud bulldog. 

I paid no attention to Tokudo, who came into the room to repeat thathis master was wanted at the telephone. 

"Do you mean you struck that child?" I demanded, leaning on the tableand looking straight into his eyes, which met mine quite unabashed, and with an air of mockery about them. 

My husband nodded as he pushed back his chair. 

"He got a good one, " he asserted as he rose to his feet and ratherleisurely brushed a crumb or two from his vest-front. He could evenafford to smile as he said it. My expression, I suppose, would havemade any man smile. But there was something maddening in his mockery, at such a moment. There was something gratuitously cruel in his paradeof unconcern. Yet, oddly enough, as I looked at his slightly blotchedface I couldn't help remembering that that was the face I had oncekissed and held close against my cheek, had _wanted_ to hold againstmy cheek. And now I hated it. 

I had to wait and cast about for words of hatred strong enough tocarry the arrows of enmity which nothing could stop me fromdelivering. But while I waited Tokudo announced for the third timethat my husband was wanted at the telephone. And a very simple thinghappened. My husband answered his call. 

I saw Duncan turn and walk out of the room. I could hear his steps inthe hallway, loud on the waxed hardwood and low on the rugs. I couldhear his deliberated chest-tones as he talked over the wire, talkedquietly and earnestly, talked me and my hatred out of his head and outof his world. And I realized, as I sat there at the table-end with mygloves twisted up under my hands and my heart even more twisted upunder my ribs, that it was all useless, that it was all futile. He wasbeyond the reach of my resentment. We were in different worlds, forevermore. 

I was still sitting there when he looked in at the door, with his hatand coat on, on his way out. I could feel him there, without directlyseeing him. And I could feel, too, that he wanted to say something. But I declined to lift my head, and I could hear the door close as hewent out to the waiting car. 

I sat there for a long time, thinking about my Dinkie. Twice I almostsurrendered to the impulse to telephone to Lossie Brown. But I knew itwould be no easy matter to get in touch with her. And in two hours itwould be twelve, and any minute after that my boy would be home again. I tried to cross-examine Tokudo, but I could get nothing out of thattight-lipped Jap. I watched the clock. I noticed Hilton, when he gotback, raking blood-stains off the gravel of the driveway. I wanderedabout, like a lost turkey-hen, trying to dramatize my meeting withDinkie, doing my best to cooper together some incident which mightkeep our first minute or two together from being too hard on my poorkiddie. I heard the twelve o'clock whistles, at last, and then theWestminster-chimes of the over-ornate clock in the library announcethat noon had come. And still the minutes dragged on. 

And when the tension was becoming almost unbearable I heard a step onthe gravel and my heart started to pound. 

But instead of Dinkie, it was Lossie, Lossie with smiling lips andinquiring brown eyes and splashes of rose in her cheeks from rapidwalking. 

"Where's Dinkie?" I asked. 

She stopped short, still smiling. 

"That's exactly what I was going to ask?" I heard her saying. Then hersmile faded as she searched my face. "There's--there's nothinghappened, has there?"

I groped my way to a pillar of the porte-cochère and leaned againstit. 

"Didn't Dinkie come to school this morning?" I asked as the earthwavered under my feet. 

"No, " acknowledged Lossie, still searching my face. And a frown ofperplexity came into her own. 

I knew then what had happened. I knew it even before I went up toDinkie's room and started my frantic search through his things. Icould see that a number of his more treasured small possessions weregone. I delved forlornly about, hoping that he might have left somehidden message for me. But I could find nothing. I sat looking at hisbooks and broken toys, at the still open copy of _The Count of MonteCristo_ which he must have been poring over only the night before, athis neatly folded underclothes and the little row of gravel-wornshoes. They took on an air of pathos, an atmosphere of the memorial. Yet, oddly enough, it was Lossie, and Lossie alone, who broke intotears. The more she cried, in fact, the calmer I found myselfbecoming, though all the while that dead weight of misery was hanginglike lead from my heart. 

I went at once to the telephone and called up Duncan's office. He wasstill there, though I had to wait several minutes before I could getin touch with him. 

I had thought, at first, that he would be offhandedly skeptical at themessage which I was sending him over the wire, the message that my boyhad run away. He might even be flippantly indifferent, and remind methat much worse things could have happened. 

But I knew at once that he was genuinely alarmed at the news which I'dgiven him. It apparently staggered him for a moment. Then he said inhis curt telephonic chest-tones, "I'll be up at the house, at once. "

He came, before I'd even completed a second and more careful search. His face was cold and non-committal enough, but his color was gone andthere was a look that was almost one of contrition in his troubledeyes, which seemed unwilling to meet mine. He questioned Lossie andcross-examined Hilton and Tokudo, and then called up the Chief ofPolice. Then he telephoned to the different railway stations, andcarried Lossie off in the car to the McArthurs', to interview Benny, and came back an hour later with that vague look of frustration stillon his face. 

He sat down to luncheon, but he ate very little. He was silent forquite a long time. 

"Your boy's all right, " he said in a much softer voice than I hadexpected from him. "He's big enough to look after himself. And we'llbe on his trail before nightfall. He can't go far. "

"No; he can't go far, " I echoed, trying to fortify myself with theknowledge that he must have taken little more than a dollar from thegilded cast-iron elephant which he used as a bank. 

"I don't want this to get in the papers, " explained my husband. "It's--it's all so ridiculous. I've put Kearney and two of his men onthe job. He's a private detective, and he'll keep busy until he getsthe boy back. "

Duncan got up from the table, rather heavily. He stood hesitating amoment and then stepped closer to my chair. 

"I know it's hard, " he said as he put a hand on my shoulder. "Butit'll be all right. We'll get your boy back for you. "

I didn't speak, because I knew that if I spoke I'd break down and makean idiot of myself. My husband waited, apparently expecting me to saysomething. Then he took his hand away. 

"I'll get busy with the car, " he said with a forced matter-of-factness, "and let you know when there's any news. I've wired Buckhorn and sent wordto Casa Grande--and we ought to get some news from there. "

But there was no news. The afternoon dragged away and the house seemedlike a tomb. And at five o'clock I did what I had wanted to do forsix long hours. I sent off a forty-seven word telegram to PeterKetley, telling him what had happened. .. . 

Duncan came back, at seven o'clock, to get one of the new photographsof Dinkie and Lossie for identification purposes. They had rounded upa small boy at Morley and Kearney was motoring out to investigate. We'd know by midnight. .. . 

It is well after midnight, and Duncan has just had a phone-messagefrom Morley. The little chap they had rounded up was a Barnado boyfired with a sudden ambition to join his uncle in the gold-fields ofAustralia. Somewhere, in the blackness of this big night, my homelessDinkie is wandering unguarded and alone. 

_Friday the Twenty-Ninth_

I have had no word from Peter. .. . I've had no news to end the achethat pins me like a spear-head to the wall of hopelessness. Duncan, Iknow, is doing all he can. But there is so little to do. And thisworld of ours, after all, is such a terrifyingly big one. 

_Saturday the Thirtieth_

I was called to the phone before breakfast this morning and it was theblessed voice of Peter I heard from the other end of the wire. Mytelegram had got out to him from Buckhorn a day late. But he had nodefinite news for me. He was quite fixed in his belief, however, thatDinkie would be bobbing up at his old home in a day or two. 

"The boy will travel this way, " he assured me. "He's bound to do that. It's as natural as water running down-hill!"

Duncan asked me whom I'd been talking to, and I had to tell him. Hisface clouded and the familiar quick look of resentment came into hiseyes. 

"I can't see what that Quaker's got to do with this question, " hebarked out. But I held my peace. 

_Sunday the First_

I have found a message from my Dinkie. I came across it this morning, by accident. It was in my sewing-basket, the basket made of birch-barkand stained porcupine quills and lined with doe-skin, which I'd oncebought from a Reservation squaw in Buckhorn with a tiny papoose on herback. Duncan had upbraided me for passing out my last five-dollar billto that hungry Nitchie, but the poor woman needed it. 

My fingers were shaking as I unfolded the note. And written there inthe script I knew so well I read:

 "Darligest Mummsey:

 I am going away. But dont worry about me for I will be alright. I couldn't stay Mummsey after what hapened. Some day I will come back to you. But I'm not as bad as all that. I'll love you always as much as ever. I can take care for myself so don't worry, please. And please feed my two rabits reglar and tell Benny I'll save his jacknife and rember every day I'm rembering you. X X X X X X X

 Your aff'cte son, DINKIE. "

It seemed like a voice from the dead, it was bittersweet consolation, and, in a way, it stood redemption of Dinkie himself. I'd beenupbraiding him, in my secret heart of hearts, for his silence to hismother. That's a streak of his father in him, had been my firstthought, that unthinking cruelty which didn't take count of theanguish of others. But he hadn't forgotten me. Whatever happens, Ihave at least this assuaging secret message from my son. And some dayhe'll come back to me. "Ye winna leave me for a', laddie?" I keepsaying, in the language of old Whinstane Sandy. And my mind goes back, almost six years at a bound, to the time he was lost on the prairie. That time, I tell myself, God was good to me. And surely He will begood to me again!

_Tuesday the Third_

We still have no single word of our laddie. .. . They all tell me not toworry. But how can a mother keep from worrying? I had rather an awfulnightmare last night, dreaming that Dinkie was trying to climb thestone wall about our place. He kept falling back with bleedingfingers, and he kept calling and calling for his mother. Without beingquite awake I went down to the door in my night-gown, and opened it, and called out into the darkness: "Is anybody there? Is it you, Dinkie?"

My husband came down and led me back to bed, with rather a frightenedlook on his face. 

They tell me not to worry, but I've been up in Dinkie's room turningover his things and wondering if he's dead, or if he's fallen into thehands of cruel people who would ill-use a child. Or perhaps he hasbeen stolen by Indians, and will come back to me with a morose andsullen mind, and with scars on his body. .. . 

_Thursday the Fifth_

What a terrible thing is loneliness. The floors of Hell, I'm sure, arepaved with lonesome hearts. Day by day I wait and long for my laddie. Always, at the back of my brain, is that big want. Day by day I broodabout him and night by night I dream of him. I turn over his oldplaythings and his books, and my throat gets tight. I stare at thefaded old snap-shots of him, and my heart turns to lead. I imagine Ihear his voice, just outside the door, or just beyond a bend in theroad, and a two-bladed sword of pain pushes slowly through mybreast-bone. Dear old Lossie comes twice a day, and does her best tocheer me up. And Gershom has offered to give up his school and join inthe search. Peter Ketley, he tells me, has been on the road for aweek, in a car covered with mud and clothes that have never come off. 

_Friday the Sixth_

There is no news of my Dinkie. And _that_, I remind myself, is theonly matter that counts. 

Lois Murchison drove up to-day in her hateful big car. She did notfind me a very agreeable hostess, I'm afraid, but curled up like anonchalant green snake in one of my armchairs and started to smoke andtalk. She asked where Duncan was and I had to explain that he'd beencalled out to the mines on imperative business. And that started hergoing on the mines. Duncan, she said, should clean up half a millionbefore he was through with that deal. He had been very successful. 

"But don't you feel, my dear, " she went on with quiet venom in hervoice, "that a great deal of his success has depended on thatbandy-legged little she-secretary of his?"

"Is she that wonderful?" I asked, trying to seem less at sea than Iwas. 

"She's certainly wonderful to him!" announced the woman known asSlinkie. And having driven that poisoned dart well into the flesh, she was content to drop her cigarette-end into the ash-receiver, reachfor her blue-fox furs, and announce that she'd have to be toddling onto the hair-dresser's. 

Lois Murchison's implication, at that moment, didn't bother me much, for I had bigger troubles to occupy my thoughts. But the more I dwellon it, the more I find myself disturbed in spirit. I resent the ideaof being upset by a wicked-tongued woman. She has, however, raised aghost which will have to be laid. To-morrow I intend to go down to myhusband's office and see his secretary, "to inspect the whaup, " asWhinnie would express it, for I find myself becoming more and moreinterested in her wonderfulness. .. . Peter sent me a hurried line ortwo to-day, telling me to sit tight as he thought he'd have news forme before the week was out. 

I suspect him of trying to trick me into some forlorn new lease ofhope. But I have pinned my faith to Peter--and I know he would nottrifle with anything so sacred as mother-love. 

_Saturday the Seventh_

There is no news of my Dinkie. .. . But there is news of anothernature. 

Between ten and eleven this morning I had Hilton motor me down toDuncan's office in Eighth Avenue. It struck me as odd, at first, thatI had never been there before. But Duncan, I remembered, had neverasked me, the domestic fly, to step into his spider's parlor ofcommerce. And I found a ridiculous timidity creeping over me as I wentup in the elevator, and found the door-number, and saw myselfconfronted by a cadaverous urchin in horn-rimmed specs, who thrust apaper-covered novel behind his chair-back and asked me what I wanted. So I asked him if this was Mr. McKail's office. 

"Sure, " he said in the established vernacular of the West. 

"What is your name, little boy?" I inquired, with the sternest brandof condescension I could command. 

The young monkey drew himself up at that and flushed angrily. "Oh, Idon't know as I'm so little, " he observed, regarding me with anarrowing eye as I stepped unbidden beyond the sacred portals. 

"Where will I find Mr. McKail's secretary?" I asked, noticing the doorin the stained-wood partition with "Private" on its frosted glass. Theyouth nodded his head toward the door in question and crossed to adesk where he proceeded languidly to affix postage-stamps to a smallpile of envelopes. 

I hesitated for a moment, as though there was something epochal in theair, as though I was making a step which might mean a great deal tome. And then I stepped over to the door and opened it. 

I saw a young woman seated at a flat-topped desk, with a gold-bandedfountain-pen in her fingers, checking over a column of figures. Shechecked carefully on to the end of her column, and then she raised herhead and looked at me. 

Her face stood out with singular distinctness, in the strongside-light from the office-window. And the woman seated at theflat-topped desk was Alsina Teeswater. 

I don't know how long I stood there without speaking. But I could seethe color slowly mount and recede on Alsina Teeswater's face. She putdown her fountain-pen, with much deliberation, and sat upright in herchair, with her barricaded eyes every moment of the time on my face. 

"So this has started again?" I finally said, in little more than awhisper. 

I could see the girl's lips harden. I could see her fortifying herselfbehind an entrenchment of quietly marshaled belligerency. 

"It has never stopped, Mrs. McKail, " she said in an equally low voice, but with the courage of utter desperation. 

It took some time, apparently, for that declaration to filter throughto my brain. Everything seemed suddenly out of focus; and it was hardto readjust vision to the newer order of things. But I was calmer, under the circumstances, than I expected to be. 

"I'm glad I understand, " I finally admitted. 

The woman at the desk seemed puzzled. Then she looked from me to hercolumn of figures and from her column of figures to the huddled roofsand walls of the city and the greening foot-hills and the solemn whitecrowns of the Rockies behind them. 

"Are you quite sure, Mrs. McKail, that you do understand?" she askedat last, with just a touch of challenge in the question. 

"Isn't it quite simple now?" I demanded. 

She found the courage to face me again. 

"I don't think this sort of thing is ever simple, " she replied, withmuch more emotion than I had expected of her. 

"But it's at least clear how it must end, " I found the courage topoint out to her. 

"Is that clear to _you_?" demanded the woman who was stepping into myshoes. It seemed odd, at the moment, that I should feel vaguely sorryfor her. 

"Perhaps you might make it clearer, " I prompted. 

"I'd rather Duncan did that, " she replied, using my husband's firstname, obviously, without knowing she had done so. 

"Wouldn't it be fairer--for the two of us--now? Wouldn't it becleaner?" I rather tremulously asked of her. 

She nodded and stared down at the sheet covered with small columns offigures. 

"I don't know whether you know it or not, " she said with a studiedsort of quietness, "but last week Mr. McKail began making arrangementsto establish a residence in Nevada. He will have to live there, ofcourse, for at least six months, perhaps even longer. "

I could feel this sinking in, like water going throughblotting-paper. The woman at the desk must have misinterpreted mysilence, for she was moved to say, in a heavier effort atself-defense, "He _knew_, of course, that you cared for some oneelse. "

I looked at her, as though she were a thousand miles away. I stoodthere impressed by the utter inadequacy of speech. And the thing thatpuzzled me was that there was an air of honesty about the woman. Shestill so desperately clung to her self-respect that she wanted me tounderstand both her predicament and her motives. I could hear herexplaining that my husband had no intention of going to Reno, butwould live in Virginia City, where he was taking up some actual mininginterests. Such things were not pleasant, of course. But this onecould be put through without difficulty. Mr. McKail had been assuredof that. 

I tried to pull myself together, wondering why I should so suddenlyfeel like a marked woman, a pariah of the prairies, as friendless andalone as a leper. Then I thought of my children. And that cleared myhead, like a wind sweeping clean a smoky room. 

"But a case has to be made out, " I began. "It would have to be provedthat I----"

"There will be no difficulty on that point, Mrs. McKail, " went on theother woman as I came to a stop. "Provided the suit is not opposed. "

The significance of that quietly uttered phrase did not escape me. Ourglances met and locked. 

"There are the children, " I reminded her. And she looked a verycommercialized young lady as she sat confronting me across her manycolumns of figures. 

"There should be no difficulty there--_provided_ the suit is notopposed, " she repeated with the air of a physician confronted by ahypochondriacal patient. 

"The children are mine, " I rather foolishly proclaimed, with my firsttouch of passion. 

"The children are yours, " she admitted. And about her hung an air ofauthority, of cool reserve, which I couldn't help resenting. 

"That is very generous of you, " I admitted, not without ironicintent. 

She smiled rather sadly as she sat looking at me. 

"It's something that doesn't rest with either of us, " she said withthe suspicion of a quaver in her voice. And _she_, I suddenlyremembered, might some day sit eating her pot of honey on a grave. Irealized, too, that very little was to be gained by prolonging thatstrangest of interviews. I wanted quietude in which to think thingsover. I wanted to go back to my cell like a prisoner and brood over mysentence. .. . 

And I have thought things over. I at last see the light. From this dayforward there shall be no vacillating. I am going back to CasaGrande. 

I have always hated this house; I have always hated everything aboutthe place, without having the courage to admit it. I have done mypart, I have made my effort, and it was a wasted effort. I wasn't evengiven a chance. And now I shall gather my things together and go backto my home, to the only home that remains to me. I shall still have mykiddies. I shall have my Poppsy and--But sharp as an arrow-head thememory of my lost boy strikes into my heart. My Dinkie is gone. I nolonger have him to make what is left of my life endurable. .. . 

It is raining to-night, I notice, steadily and dismally. It is a darknight, outside, for lost children. .. . 

Duncan has just come home, wet and muddy, and gone up to his room. Thegray-faced solemnity with which he strode past me makes me feel surethat he has been conversing with his lady-love. But what differencedoes it make? What difference does _anything_ make? In the matter ofwomen, I have just remembered, what may be one man's meat is anotherman's poison. But I can't understand these reversible people, likehouse-rugs, who can pretend to love two ways at once. .. . I only knowone man, in all the wide world, who has not shattered my faith in hiskind. He is one of those neck-or-nothing men who never change. 

There are many ranchers, out in this country, who keep what they calla blizzard-line. It's a rope that stretches in winter from theirhouse-door to their shed or their stable, a rope that keeps them fromgetting lost when a blizzard is raging. Peter, I know, has been myblizzard-line. And in some way, please God, he will yet lead me backto warmth. He is himself out there in the cold, accepting it, all thetime, with the same quiet fortitude that a Polar bear might. But hewill thole through, in the end. For with all his roughness he can beunexpectedly adroit. Whinstane Sandy once told me something he hadlearned about Polar bears in his old Yukon days: with all theirheaviness, they can go where a dog daren't venture. If need be, theycan flatten out and slide over a sheet of ice too thin to support arunning dog. And the drift-ice may be widening, but I refuse to giveup my hope of hope. "Let the mother go, " as the Good Book says, "thatit may be well with thee!" . .. 

I have just remembered that I tried to shoot my husband once. He maymake use of _that_, when he gets down to Virginia City. It might, infact, help things along very materially. And Susie's eyes willprobably pop out, when she reads it in a San Francisco paper. .. . 

I've thought of so many clever things I should have said to AlsinaTeeswater. As I look back, I find it was the other lady who did aboutall the talking. There were old ulcerations to be cleared away, ofcourse, and I let her talk about the same as you let a dentist workwith his fingers in your mouth. .. . But now I must go up and make suremy Poppsy is safely tucked in. I have just opened the door and lookedout. It is storming wretchedly. God pity any little boys who areabroad on such a night!

_Two Hours Later_

It is well past midnight. But there is no sleep this night for ChaddieMcKail. I am too happy to sleep. I am too happy to act sane. For myboy is safe. _Peter has found my Dinkie!_

I was called to the telephone, a little after eleven, but couldn'thear well on the up-stairs extension, so I went to the instrumentdown-stairs, where the operator told me it was long-distance, fromBuckhorn. So I listened, with my heart in my mouth. But all I couldget was a buzz and crackle and an occasional ghostly word. It was thestorm, I suppose. Then I heard Peter's voice, thin and faint and faraway, but most unmistakably Peter's voice. 

"Can you hear me now?" he said, like a man speaking from the bottom ofthe sea. 

"Yes, " I called back. "What is it?"

"Get ready for good news, " said that thin but valorous voice thatseemed to be speaking from the tip-top mountains of Mars. But thecrackling and burring cut us off again. Then something must havehappened to the line, or we must have been switched to a bettercircuit. For, the next moment, Peter's voice seemed almost in the nextroom. It seemed to come closer at a bound, like a shore-line when youlook at it through a telescope. 

"Is that any better?" he asked through his miles and miles ofrain-swept blackness. 

"Yes, I can hear you plainly now, " I told him. 

"Ah, yes, that _is_ better, " he acknowledged. "And everything else is, too, my dear. For I've found your Dinkie and----"

"You've found Dinkie?" I gasped. 

"I have, thank God. And he's safe and sound!"

"Where?" I demanded. 

"Fast asleep at Alabama Ranch. "

"Is he all right?"

"As fit as a fiddle--all he wants is sleep. "

"_Oh, Peter!_" It was foolish. But it was all I could say for a fullminute. For my boy was alive, and safe. My laddie had been found byPeter--by good old Peter, who never, in the time of need, was known tofail me. 

"Where are you now?" I asked, when reason was once more on herthrone. 

"At Buckhorn, " answered Peter. 

"And you went all that way through the mud and rain, just to tell me?"I said. 

"I had to, or I'd blow up!" acknowledged Peter. "And now I'd like toknow what you want me to do. "

"I want you to come and get me, Peter, " I said slowly and distinctlyover the wire. 

There was a silence of several seconds. 

"Do you understand what that means?" he finally demanded. His voice, Inoticed, had become suddenly solemn. 

"Yes, Peter, I understand, " I told him. "Please come and get me!" Andagain the silence was so prolonged that I had to cut in and ask: "Areyou there?"

And Peter's voice answered "Yes. "

"Then you'll come?" I exacted, determined to burn all my bridgesbehind me. 

"I'll be there on Monday, " said Peter, with quiet decision. "I'll bethere with Tithonus and Tumble-Weed and the old prairie-schooner. Andwe'll all trek home together!"

"_Skookum!_" I said with altogether unbecoming levity. 

I patted the telephone instrument as I hung up the receiver. Then Isat staring at it in a brown study. 

Then I went careening up-stairs and woke Poppsy out of a sound sleepand hugged her until her bones were ready to crack and told her thatour Dinkie had been found again. And Poppsy, not being quite able toget it through her sleepy little head, promptly began to bawl. Butthere was little to bawl over, once she was thoroughly awake. And thenI went careening down to the telephone again, and called up Lossie'sboarding-house, and had her landlady root the poor girl out of bed, and heard _her_ break down and have a little cry when I told her ourDinkie had been found. And the first thing she asked me, when she wasable to talk again, was if Gershom Binks had been told of the goodnews. And I had to acknowledge that I hadn't even _thought_ of poorold Gershom, but that Peter Ketley would surely have passed the goodword on to Casa Grande, for Peter always seemed to think of the rightthing. 

And then I remembered about Duncan. For Duncan, whatever he may havebeen, was still the boy's father. And he must be told. It was my dutyto tell him. So once more I climbed the stairs, but this time moreslowly. I had to wait a full minute before I found the courage, Idon't know why, to knock on Duncan's bedroom door. 

I knocked twice before any answer came. 

"What is it?" asked the familiar sleepy _bass_--and I realized whatgulfs yawned between us when my husband on one side of that closeddoor could be lying lost in slumber and I on the other side of itcould find life doing such unparalleled things to me. I felt for himas a girl home, tired from her first dance, feels for a young brotherasleep beside a Noah's Ark. 

"What is it?" I heard Duncan's voice repeating from the bed. 

"It's me, " I rather weakly proclaimed. 

"What has happened?" was the question that came after a moment'ssilence. 

I leaned with my face against the painted door-panel. It was smoothand cool and pleasant to press one's skin against. 

"They've found Dinkie, " I said. I could hear the squeak of springs asmy husband sat up in bed. 

"Is he all right?"

"Yes, he's all right, " I said with a great sigh. And I listened for ananswering sigh from the other side of the door. 

But instead of that Duncan's voice asked: "Where is he?"

"At Alabama Ranch, " I said, without realizing what that acknowledgmentmeant. And again a brief period of silence intervened. 

"Who found him?" asked my husband, in a hardened voice. 

"Peter Ketley, " I said, in as collected a voice as I could manage. Andthis time the significance of the silence did not escape me. 

"Then your cup of happiness ought to be full, " I heard the voice onthe other side of the door remark with heavy deliberateness. I stoodthere with my face leaning against the cool panel. 

"It is, " I said with a quiet audacity which surprised me almost asmuch as it must have surprised the man on the bed a million miles awayfrom me. 

_Sunday the Eighth_

How different is life from what the fictioneers would paint it! Howhopelessly mixed-up and macaronic, how undignified in what ought to beits big moments and how pompous in so many of its pettinesses!

I told my husband to-day that Poppsy and I were going back to CasaGrande. And that, surely, ought to have been the Big Moment in thecareer of an unloved invertebrate. But the situation declined to takeoff, as the airmen say. 

"I guess that means it's about time we got unscrambled, " the man I hadonce married and lived with quietly remarked. 

"Wasn't that your intention?" I just as quietly inquired. 

"It's what I've had forced on me, " he retorted, with a protectivehardening of the Holbein-Astronomer jaw-line. 

"I'm sorry, " was all I could find to say. 

He turned to the window and stared out at his big white iron fountainset in his terraced lawn behind his endless cobble-stone walls. Icouldn't tell, of course, what he was thinking about. But I myself wasthinking of the past, the irrecoverable past, the irredeemable past, the singing years of my womanly youth that seemed to be sealed in alowered coffin on which the sheltering earth would soon be heaped, onwhich the first clods were already dropping with hollow sounds. Weeach seemed afraid to look the other full in the eyes. So we armoredourselves, as poor mortals must do, in the helmets of pretendeddiffidence and the breast-plates of impersonality. 

"How are you going back?" my husband finally inquired. Whatever ghostsit had been necessary to lay, I could see, he had by this time laid. He no longer needed to stare out at the white iron fountain of whichhe was so proud. 

"I've sent for the prairie-schooner, " I told him. 

His flush of anger rather startled me. 

"Doesn't that impress you as rather cheaply theatrical?" he demanded. 

"I fancy it will be very comfortable, " I told him, without looking up. I'd apparently been attributing to him feelings which, after all, werenot so desolating as I might have wished. 

"Every one to his own taste, " he observed as he called rather sharplyto Tokudo to bring him his humidor. Then he took out a cigar andlighted it and ordered the car. And that was the lee and the long ofit. That was the way we faced our Great Divide, our forked trail thatveered off East and West into infinity!

_Thursday the Eleventh_

The trek is over. And it was not one of triumph. For we findourselves, sometimes, in deeper water than we imagine. Then we have tochoke and gasp for a while before we can get our breath back. 

Peter, in the first place, didn't appear with the prairie-schooner. Heleft that to come later in the day, with Whinnie and Struthers. Heappeared quite early Monday morning, with fire in his eye, and with ademand to see the master of the house. Heaven knows what he had heard, or how he had heard it. But the two men were having it hot and heavywhen I felt it was about time for me to step into the room. To bequite frank, I had not expected any such outburst from Duncan. I knewhis feelings were not involved, and where you have a vacuum it isimpossible, of course, to have an explosion. I interpreted hisresentment as a show of opposition to save his face. But I was wrong. And I was wrong about Peter. That mild-eyed man is no plaster saint. He can fight, if he's goaded into it, and fight like a bulldog. Hewas saying a few plain truths to Duncan, when I stepped into the room, a few plain truths which took the color out of the Dour Man's face andmade him shake with anger. 

"For two cents, " Duncan was rather childishly shouting at him, "I'dfill you full of lead!"

"Try it!" said Peter, who wasn't any too steady himself. "Try it, andyou'd at least end up with doing something in the open!"

Duncan studied him, like a prize-fighter studying his waitingopponent. 

"You're a cheap actor, " he finally announced. "This sort of thingisn't settled that way, and you know it. "

"And it's not going to be settled the way you intended, " announcedPeter Ketley. 

"What do you know about my intentions?" demanded Duncan. 

"Much more than you imagine, " retorted Peter. "I've got your record, McKail, and I've had it for three years. I've stood by, until now; butthe time has come when I'm going to have a hand in this thing. Andyou're not going to get your freedom by dragging this woman's namethrough a divorce-court. If there's any dragging to be done, it'syour carcass that's going to be tied to the tail-board!"

Duncan stood studying him with a face cheese-colored with hate. 

"Aren't you rather double-crossing yourself?" he mocked. 

"I'm not thinking about myself, " said Peter. 

"Then what's prompting all the heroics?" demanded Duncan. 

"For two years and more, McKail, " Peter cried out as he stepped closerto the other man, "you've given this woman a pretty good working ideaof hell. And I've seen enough of it. It's going to end. It's got toend. But it's not going to end the way you've so neatly figured out!"

"Then how do you propose to end it?" Duncan demanded, with a sort ofsecond-wind of composure. But his face was still colorless. 

"You'll see when the time comes, " retorted Peter. 

"You may have rather a long wait, " taunted Duncan. 

"I have waited a number of years, " answered the other man, with adignity which sent a small thrill up and down my spine. "And I canwait a number of years more if I have to. "

"We all knew, of course, that you were waiting, " sneered my husband. 

Peter turned to fling back an answer to that, but I stepped betweenthem. I was tired of being haggled over, like marked-down goods on abargain-counter. I was tired of being a passive agent before forcesthat seemed stripping me of my last shred of dignity. I was tired ofthe shoddiness of the entire shoddy situation. 

And I told them so. I told them I'd no intention of being bargainedover, and that I'd had rather enough of men for the rest of my naturallife, and if Duncan wanted his freedom he was at liberty to take itwithout the slightest opposition from me. And I said a number of otherthings, which I have no wish either to remember or record. But itresulted in Duncan staring at me in a resurrection-plant sort of way, and in Peter rather dolorously taking his departure. I wanted to callhim back, but I couldn't carpenter together any satisfactory excusefor his coming back, and I couldn't see any use in it. 

So instead of journeying happily homeward in the cavernous oldprairie-schooner, I felt a bit ridiculous as Tokudo impassivelycarried our belongings out to the canvas-covered wagon and Poppsy andI climbed aboard. The good citizens of American Hill stared after usas we rumbled down through the neatly boulevarded streets, and I feltsuspiciously like a gypsy-queen who'd been politely requested by thelocal constabulary to move on. 

It wasn't until we reached the open country that my spirits revived. Then the prairie seemed to reach out its hand to me and give me peace. We camped, that first night, in the sheltering arm of a little couléethreaded by a tiny stream. We cooked bacon and eggs and coffee whileWhinnie out-spanned his team and put up his tent. 

I sat on an oat-sack, after supper, with Poppsy between my knees, watching the evening stars come out. They were worlds, I remembered, some of them worlds perhaps with sorrowing men and women on them. Andthey seemed very lonely and far-away worlds, until I heard the drowsyvoice of my Poppsy say up through the dusk: "In two days more, Mummy, we'll be back to Dinkie, won't we?"

And there was much, I remembered, for which a mother should bethankful. 

_Sunday the Fourteenth_

_Dark, and true, and tender is the North. _ Heaven bless the rhymsterwho first penned those words. Spring is stealing hack to the prairie, and our world is a world of beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed withflat-bottomed cumulus-clouds, tier beyond tier above a level plane oflight, marking off the infinite distance like receding mile-stones ona world turned over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head ofa wild duck, pumping north with a black throb of wings, melts away toa speck in the opaline air. Back among the muskeg reeds the waders arecourting and chattering, and early this morning I heard the plaintivewinnowing call-note of the Wilson snipe, and later the _punk-e-lunk_love-cry of a bittern to his mate. There's an eagle planing in lazycircles high in the air, even now, putting a soft-pedal on the noiseof the coots and grebes as he circles over their rush-lined cabarets. And somewhere out on the range a bull is lowing. It is the season oflove and the season of happiness. Dinkie and Poppsy and I are goingout to gather prairie-crocuses. They are thick now in the prairie-sod, soft blue and lavender and sometimes mauve. We must dance to thevernal saraband while we can: Spring is so short in this norlandcountry of ours. It comes late. But as Peter says, A late spring neverdeceives. .. . 

I thought I had offended Peter for life. But when he appeared latethis afternoon and I asked him why he had kept away from me, he saidthese first few days naturally belonged to Dinkie and he'd been busystudying marsh-birds. He looked rather rumpled and muddy, andimpressed me as a man sadly in need of a woman to look after histhings. 

"Let's ride, " said Peter. "I want to talk to you. "

I was afraid of that talk, but I was more afraid something mighthappen to interfere with it. So I changed into my old riding-duds andput on my weather-stained old sombrero and we saddled Buntie andLaughing-Gas and went loping off over the sun-washed prairie with ourshadows behind us. 

We rode a long way before Peter said anything. I wanted to be happy, but I wasn't quite able to be. I tried to think of neither the pastnor the future, but there were too many ghosts of other days lopingalong the trail beside us. 

"What are you going to do?" Peter finally inquired. 

"About what?" I temporized as he pulled up beside me. 

"About everything, " he ungenerously responded. 

"I don't know what to do, Peter, " I had to acknowledge. "I'm like abarrel without hoops. I want to stick together, but one more thumpwill surely send me to pieces!"

"Then why not get the hoops around?" suggested Peter. 

"But where will I get the hoops?" I asked. 

"Here, " he said. He was, I noticed, holding out his arms. And Ilaughed, even though my heart was heavy. 

"Men have been a great disappointment to me, Peter, " I said with ashake of my sombrero. 

"Try me, " suggested Peter. 

But still again I had to shake my head. 

"That wouldn't be fair, Peter, " I told him. "I can't spoil your lifeto see what's left of my own patched up. "

"Then you're going to spoil two of 'em!" he promptly asserted. 

"But I don't believe in that sort of thing, " I did my best to explainto him. "I've had my innings, and _I'm out_. I've a one-way heart, thesame as a one-way street. I don't think there's anything in the worldmore odious than promiscuity. That's a big word, but it stands for aneven bigger offense against God. I've always said I intended to be asingle-track woman. "

"But your track's blown up, " contended Peter. 

"Then I'll have to lay me a new one, " I said with a fine show ofassurance. 

"And do you know where it will lead?" he demanded, "Where?" I asked. 

"Straight to me, " he said as he studied me with eyes that were soquiet and kind I could feel a flutter of my heart-wings. 

But still again I shook my head. 

"That would be bringing you nothing but a withered up old has-been, " Isaid with a mock-wail of misery. 

And Peter actually laughed at that. 

"It'll be a good ten years before you've even grown up, " he retorted. "And another twenty years before you've really settled down!"

"You're saying I'll never have sense, " I objected. "And I know you'reright. "

"That's what I love about you, " averred Peter. 

"What you love about me?" I demanded. 

"Yes, " he said with his patient old smile, "your imperishableyouthfulness, your eternal never-ending eternity-defying golden-tintedgirlishness!"

A flute began to play in my heart. And I knew that like Ulysses's menI would have to close my ears to it. But it's easier to row past anisland than to run away from your own heart. 

"I know it's a lie, Peter, but I love you for saying it. It makes mewant to hug you, and it makes me want to pirouette, if I wasn't onhorseback. It makes my heart sing. But it's only the singing of onelonely little chickadee in the middle of a terribly big pile of ruins. For that's all my life can be now, just a hopeless smash-up. Andyou're cut out for something better than a wrecking-car for the restof your days. "

"No, no, " protested Peter. "It's _you_ who've got to save _me_. "

"Save you?" I echoed. 

"You've got to give me something to live for, or I'll just rust awayin the ditch and never get back to the rails again. "

"Peter!" I cried. 

"What?" he asked. 

"You're not playing fair. You're trying to make me pity you. "

"Well, don't you?" demanded Peter. 

"I would if I saw you sacrificing your life for a woman with acrazy-quilt past. "

"I'm not thinking of the past, " asserted Peter, "I'm thinking of thefuture. "

"That's just it, " I tried to explain. "I'll have to face that futurewith a clouded name. I'll be a divorced woman. Ugh! I always thoughtof divorced women as something you wouldn't quite care to sit next toat table. I hate divorce. "

"I'm a Quaker myself, " acknowledged Peter. "But I occasionally thinkof what Cobbett once said: 'I don't much like weasels. Yet I haterats. Therefore I say success to the weasels!'"

"I don't see what weasels have to do with it, " I complained. 

"Putting one's house in order again may sometimes be as beneficent assurgery, " contended Peter. 

"And sometimes as painful, " I added. 

"Yet there's no mistake like not cleaning up old mistakes. "

"But I hate it, " I told him. "It all seems so--so cheap. "

"On the contrary, " corrected Peter, "it's rather costly. " He pulled upacross my path and made me come to a stop. "My dear, " he said, verysolemn again, "I know the stuff you're made of. I know you've got toclimb to the light by a path of your own choosing. And you have to seethe light with your own eyes. But I'm willing to wait. I _have_waited, a very long time. But there's one fact you've got to face: Ilove you too much ever to dream of giving you up. "

I don't think either of us moved for a full moment. The flute wassinging so loud in my heart that I was afraid of myself. And, woman-like, I backed away from the thing I wanted. 

"It's not _me_, Peter, I must remember now. It's my bairns. I've twobairns to bring up. "

"I've got the three of you to bring up, " maintained Peter. And thatmade us both sit silent for another moment or two. 

"It's not that simple, " I finally said, though Peter smiled guardedlyat my ghost of a smile. 

"It would be if you cared for me as much as Dinkie does, " he said withquite unnecessary solemnity. 

"Oh, Peter, I do, I do, " I cried out as the memory of all I owed himsurged mistily through my mind. "But a gray hair is something youcan't joke away. And I've got five of them, right here over my leftear. I found them, months ago. And they're there to stay!"

"How about my bald spot?" demanded my oppressor and my delivererrolled into one. 

"What's a bald spot compared to a bob-cat of a temper like mine?" Ichallenged, remembering how I'd once heard a revolver-hammer snap inmy husband's face. 

"But it's your spirit I like, " maintained the unruffled Peter. 

"You wouldn't always, " I reminded him. 

Yet he merely looked at me with his trust-me-and-test-me expression. 

"I'll chance it!" he said, after a quite contented moment or two ofmeditative silence. 

"But don't you see, " I went forlornly arguing on, "it mustn't be achance. That's something people of our age can never afford to take. "

And Peter, at that, for some reason I couldn't fathom, began to waghis head. He did it slowly and lugubriously, like a man who inspects aroad he has no liking for. But at the same time, apparently, he wasfinding it hard to tuck away a small smile of triumph. 

"Then we must never see each other again, " he solemnly asserted. 

"Peter!" I cried. 

"I must go away, at once, " he meditatively observed. 

"_Peter!_" I said again, with the flute turning into a pair ofice-tongs that clamped into the corners of my heart. 

"Far, far away, " he continued as he studiously avoided my eye. "Forthere will be safety now only in flight. "

"Safety from what?" I demanded. 

"From you, " retorted Peter. 

"But what will happen to _me_, if you do that?" I heard my own voiceasking as Buntie started to paw the prairie-floor and I did my levelbest to fight down the black waves of desolation that werehalf-drowning me. "What'll there be to hold me up, when you're theonly man in all this world who can keep my barrel of happiness fromgoing slap-bang to pieces? What----?"

"_Verboten!_" interrupted Peter. But that solemn-soft smile of hisgathered me in and covered me, very much as the rumpled feathers of amother-bird cover her young, her crazily twittering and crazilywandering young who never know their own mind. 

"What'll happen to me, " I went desperately on, "when you're the onlyman alive who understands this crazy old heart of mine, when you'vetaught me to hitch the last of my hope on the one unselfish man I'veever known?"

This seemed to trouble Peter. But only remotely, as the lack ofgrammar in the Lord's Prayer might affect a Holy Roller. He insisted, above all things, on being judicial. 

"Then I'll have to come back, I suppose, " he finally admitted, "forDinkie's sake. "

"Why for Dinkie's sake?" I asked. 

"Because some day, my dear, our Dinkie is going to be a great man. AndI want to have a hand in fashioning that greatness. "

I sat looking at the red ball of the sun slipping down behind theshoulder of the world. A wind came out of the North, cool and sweetand balsamic with hope. I heard a loon cry. And then the earth wasstill again. 

"_We'll be waiting_, " I said, with a tear of happiness tickling thebridge of my nose. And then, so that Peter might not see still anotherloon crying, I swung Buntie sharply about on the trail. And we rodehome, side by side, through the twilight. 

THE END