rn
blacksmith, who in turn concocted a great steel hollow-headed
monstrosity which actually fits over the pins to which the piano wires
are strung, even though the aforesaid monstrosity is heavy enough to
stun an ox with. But it did the work, although it took about two
half-days, and now every note is true. So now I have music! And
Dinky-Dunk does enjoy my playing, these long winter evenings. Some
nights we let Olie come in and listen to the concert. He sits rapt,
especially when I play ragtime, which seems the one thing that touches
his holy of holies. Poor Olie! I surely have a good friend in that
silent, faithful, uncouth Swede!

Dinky-Dunk himself is so thin that it worries me. But he eats well and
doesn't anathematize my cooking. He's getting a few gray hairs, at the
temples. I think they make him look rather _distingue_. But they worry
my poor Dinky-Dunk. "Hully Gee," he said yesterday, studying himself
for the third time in his shaving-glass, "I'm getting old!" He laughed
when I started to whistle "Believe me if all those endearing young
charms, which I gaze on so fondly to-day," but at heart he was really
disturbed by the discovery of those few white hairs. I've been telling
him that the ladies won't love him any more, and that his cut-up days
are over. He says I'll have to make up for the others. So I started for
him with my Australian crawl-stroke. It took me an hour to get the taste
of shaving soap out of my mouth. Dinky-Dunk says I'm so full of life
that I _sparkle_. All I know is that I'm happy, supremely and
ridiculously happy!

_Sunday the Thirty-first_

The inevitable has happened. I don't know how to write about it! I
_can't_ write about it! My heart goes down like a freight elevator,
slowly, sickeningly, even when I think about it. Dinky-Dunk came in and
saw me studying a little row of dates written on the wall-paper beside
the bedroom window. I pretended to be draping the curtain. "What's the
matter, Lady Bird?" he demanded when he saw my face. I calmly told him
that nothing was the matter. But he wouldn't let me go. I wanted to be
alone, to think things out. But he kept holding me there, with my face
to the light. I suppose I must have been all eyes, and probably shaking
a little. And I didn't want him to suspect.

"Excuse me if I find you unspeakably annoying!" I said in a voice that
was so desperately cold that it even surprised my own ears. He dropped
me as though I had been a hot pot