niform, and the milky white statues among the trees,
and the golden mists of the late afternoon over the Immortal City. And I
tell myself that it was all a dream. And then I feel that _I_ am all a
dream, and the prairie is a dream, and Paddy and Olie and Dinky-Dunk and
all this new life is nothing more than a dream. Oh, Matilda Anne, I've
been homesick this week, so unhappy and homesick for something--for
something, and I don't even know what it is!

_Monday the Seventh_

Glory be! Winter's here with a double-edged saber wind out of the north
and snow on the ground. It gives a zip to things. It makes our snug
little shack seem as cozy as a ship's cabin. And I've got a
jumper-sleigh, and with my coon-skin coat and gauntlets and wedge-cap I
can be as warm as toast in any wind. And there's so much to do. And I'm
not going to be a piker. This is the land where folks make good or go
loco. You've only got yourself to depend on, and yourself to blame, if
things go wrong. And I'm going to make them go right. There's no use
wailing out here in the West. A line or two of Laurence Hope's has been
running all day through my head:

"These are my people, and this my land;
I hear the pulse of her secret soul.
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple, and sane and whole."

_Friday the Eleventh_

Dinky-dunk came home with an Indian girl to-day, a young half-breed about
sixteen years old. She's to be both companion and parlor-maid, for
Dinky-Dunk has to hurry off to British Columbia, to try to sell his
timber-rights there to meet his land payments. He's off to-morrow. It
makes me feel wretched, but I'm consuming my own smoke, for I don't want
him to think me an encumbrance. My Indian girl speaks a little English.
She also eats sugar by the handful, whenever she can steal it. I asked
her what her name was and she told me "Queenie MacKenzie." That name
almost took my breath away. How that untutored Northwest aborigine ever
took unto herself this Broadway chorus-girl name, Heaven only knows! But
I have my suspicions of Queenie. She has certain exploratory movements
which convince me she is verminous. She sleeps in the annex, I'm happy
to say.

At dinner to-night when I was teaching Dinky-Dunk how to make a rabbit
out of his table-napkin and a sea-sick passenger out of the last of his
oranges, he explained that he might not get back in time for Christmas,
and asked if I'd mind. I knew his trip