e to watch them melt in the
sky-line. The prairie floor is turning to the loveliest of greens, and
it is a joy just to be alive. I have been out all afternoon. The gophers
aren't going to get ahead of me!

_Monday the Twelfth_

What would you say if you saw Brunhild drive up to your back door? What
would you do if you discovered a Norse goddess placidly surveying you
from a green wagon-seat? How would you act if you beheld a big blonde
Valkyr suddenly introducing herself into your little earthly affairs?

Well, can you wonder that I stared, all eyes, when Dinky-Dunk brought
home a figure like this, in the shape of a Finn girl named Olga
Sarristo? Olga is to work in the fields, and to help me when she has
time. But I'll never get used to having a Norse Legend standing at my
elbow, for Olga is the most wonderful creature I have ever clapped eyes
on. I say that without doubt, and without exaggeration. And what made
the picture complete, she came driving a yoke of oxen--for Dinky-Dunk
will have need of every horse and hauling animal he can lay his hands
on. I simply held my breath as I stared up at her, high on her
wagon-seat, blocked out in silhouette against the pale sky-line, a
Brunhild with cowhide boots on. She wore a pale blue petticoat and a
Swedish looking black shawl with bright-colored flowers worked along the
hem. She had no hat. But she had two great ropes of pale gold hair,
almost as thick as my arm, and hanging almost as low as her knees. She
looked colossal up on the wagon-seat, but when she got down on the
ground she was not so immense. She is, however, a strapping big woman,
and I don't think I ever saw such shoulders! She is Olympian, Titanic!
She makes me think of the Venus de Milo; there's such a largeness and
calmness and smoothness of surface about her. I suppose a Saint-Gaudens
might say that her mouth was too big and a Gibson might add that her
nose hadn't the narrow rectitude of a Greek statue's, but she's a
beautiful, a beautiful--"woman" was the word I was going to write, but
the word "animal" just bunts and shoves itself in, like a stabled cow
insisting on its own stall. But if you regard her as only animal, you
must at least accept her as a perfect one. Her mouth is large, but I
never saw such red lips, full and red and dewy. Her forehead is low and
square, but milky smooth, and I know she could crack a chicken-bone
between those white teeth of hers. Even her tongue, I noticed, is a
w