his lungs rather troubled him in England, and he has spent
over a year in Florence and Rome and can talk pictures like a Grant
Allen guide-book. And he's sat through many an opera at La Scala, but
considered the Canadian coyote a much better vocalist than most of the
minor Italian tenors. And he knows Capri and Taormina and says he'd like
to grow old and die in Sicily. He got pneumonia at Messina, and nearly
died young there and after five months in Switzerland a specialist told
him to try Canada.

I've noticed that one of the delusions of Americans is that an
Englishman is silent. Now, my personal conviction is that Englishmen are
the greatest talkers in the world, and I have Percy to back me up in it.
In fact, we sat about talking so long that Percy asked if he couldn't
stay all night, as he was a poor rider and wasn't sure of the trails as
yet. So we made a shake-down for him in the living-room. And when
Dinky-Dunk came to bed he confided to me that Percy was calmly reading
and smoking himself to sleep, out of my sadly scorned copy of _The Ring
and the Book_, with the lamp on the floor, on one side of him, and a
saucer on the other, for an ash-tray. But he was up and out this
morning, before either of us was stirring, coming back to Casa Grande,
however, when he saw the smoke at the chimney-top. His thin cheeks were
quite pink and he apologetically explained that he'd been trying for an
hour and a half to catch his cayuse. Olie had come to his rescue. But
our thin-shouldered Oxford exile said that he had never seen such a
glorious sunrise, and that the ozone had made him a bit tipsy. Speaking
of thin-shouldered specimens, Matilda Anne, I was once a thirty-six;
_now I am a perfect forty-two_.

_Friday the Fifth_

The weather has been bad all this week, but I've had a great deal of
sewing to do, and for two days Dinky-Dunk stayed in and helped me fix up
the shack. I made more book-shelves out of more old biscuit-boxes and my
lord made a gun-rack for our fire-arms. Percival Benson rode over once,
through the storm, and it took us half an hour to thaw him out. But he
brought some books, and says he has four cases, altogether, and that
we're welcome to all we wish. He stayed until noon the next day, this
time sleeping in the annex, which Dinky-Dunk and I have papered, so that
it looks quite presentable. But as yet there is no way of heating it.
Our new neighbor, I imagine, is very lonesome.

_Sunday the