plain legs!"

"Anything but _plain_!" I corrected him. Then he acknowledged that he'd
seen those knees before. He'd stumbled on Olga and her brother knee-deep
in mud and cow manure, treading a mixture to plaster their shack with,
the same as the Doukhobors do. It left me less envious of those
Junoesque knees.

_Monday the Second_

Keeping chickens is a much more complicated thing than the outsider
imagines. For example, several of my best hens, quite untouched by the
modern spirit of feminine unrest, have been developing "broodiness" and
I have been trying to "break them up," as the poulterers put it. But
they are determined to set. This mothering instinct is a fine enough
thing in its way, but it's been spoiling too many good eggs. So I've
been trying to emancipate these ruffled females. I lift them off the
nest by the tail feathers, ten times a day. I fling cold water in their
solemn maternal faces. I put little rings of barb-wire under their
sentimental old bosoms. But still they set. And one, having pecked me on
the wrist until the blood came, got her ears promptly boxed--in face of
the fact that all poultry keepers acknowledge that kindness to a hen
improves her laying qualities.

_Thursday the Fifth_

Casa Grande is a beehive of industry. Every one has a part to play. I am
no longer expected to sit by the fire and purr. At nights I sew.
Dinky-Dunk is so hard on his clothes! When it's not putting on patches
it's sewing on buttons. Then we go to bed at half-past nine. At
half-past nine, think of it! Little me, who more than once went humming
up Fifth Avenue when morning was showing gray over the East River, and
often left Sherry's (oh, those dear old dancing days!) when the milk
wagons were rumbling through Forty-fourth Street, and once triumphantly
announced, on coming out of Dorlon's and studying the old Oyster-Letter
clock, that I'd stuck it out to Y minutes past O! But it's no hardship
to get up at five, these glorious mornings. The days get longer, and the
weather is perfect. And the prairie looks as though a vacuum cleaner
had been at work on it overnight. Positively, there's a charwoman who
does this old world over, while we sleep! By morning it's as bright as a
new pin. And out here every one is thinking of the day ahead;
Dinky-Dunk, of his crop; Olga, of the pair of sky-blue corsets I've
written to the Winnipeg mail-order house for; Olie, of the final
waterproofing of the granaries so