y were one piece of machinery, and then
the heavy curtain stealing up, and the thrill as that new heaven opened
up to me, a gawky girl in her first low-cut dinner gown!

I told Dinky-Dunk I'd sat in every corner of that old house, up in the
sky-parlor with the Italian barbers, in press-seats in the second
gallery with dear old Fanny-Rain-in-the-Face, and in the Westbury's box
with the First Lady of the Land and a Spanish Princess with extremely
dirty nails. It seemed so far away, another life and another world! And
for three hours of "Manon" I'd be willing to hang like a chimpanzee from
the Metropolitan's center chandelier. I suddenly realized how much I
missed it. I could have sung to the City as poor Charpentier's "Louise"
sang to her Paris. And a coyote howled up near the trail, and the
prairie got dark, with a pale green rind of light along the northwest,
and I knew there would be a heavy frost before morning.

To-night after supper my soul and I sat down and did a bit of
bookkeeping. Dinky-Dunk, who'd been watching me out of the corner of his
eye, went to the window and said it looked like a storm. And I knew he
meant that I was the Medicine Hat it was to come from, for before he'd
got up from the table he'd explained to me that matrimony was like
motoring because it was really traveling by means of a series of
explosions. Then he tried to explain that in a few weeks the fall rush
would be over and we'd have more time for getting what we deserved out
of life. But I turned on him with sudden fierceness and declared I
wasn't going to be merely an animal. I intended to keep my soul alive,
that it was every one's duty, no matter where they were, to ennoble
their spirit by keeping in touch with the best that has ever been felt
and thought.

When I grimly got out my mouth-organ and played the _Pilgrim's Chorus_,
as well as I could remember it, Dinky-Dunk sat listening in silent
wonder. He kept up the fire, and waited until I got through. Then he
reached for the dish-pan and said, quite casually, "I'm going to help you
wash up to-night, Gee-Gee!" And so I put away the mouth-organ and washed
up. But before I went to bed I got out my little vellum edition of
Browning's _The Ring and the Book_, and read at it industriously,
doggedly, determinedly, for a solid hour. What it's all about I don't
know. Instead of ennobling my spirit it only tired my brain and ended
up in making me so mad I flung the book into the wood-box....