king country to
what it was when he left. I've been staring up at a cobalt sky, and
begin to understand why people used to think Heaven was somewhere up in
the midst of such celestial blue. And on the prairie the sky is your
first and last friend. Wasn't it Emerson who somewhere said that the
firmament was the daily bread for one's eyes? And oh, the lovely,
greening floor of the wheat country now! Such a soft yellow-green glory
stretching so far in every direction, growing so much deeper day by day!
And the sun and space and clear light on the sky-line and the pillars of
smoke miles away and the wonderful, mysterious promise that is hanging
over this teeming, steaming, shimmering, abundant broad bosom of earth!
It thrills me in a way I can't explain. By night and day, before
breakfast and after supper, the talk is of wheat, wheat, wheat, until I
nearly go crazy. I complained to Dinky-Dunk that he was dreaming wheat,
living wheat, breathing wheat, that he and all the rest of the world
seemed mad about wheat.

"And there's just one other thing you must remember, Lady Bird," was his
answer. "All the rest of the world is _eating_ wheat. It can't live
without wheat. And I'd rather be growing the bread that feeds the hungry
than getting rich making cordite and Krupp guns!" So he's risking
everything on this crop of his, and is eternally figuring and planning
and getting ready for the _grande debacle_. He says it will be like a
battle. And no general goes into a battle without being prepared for it.
But when we read about the doings of the outside world, it seems like
reading of happenings that have taken place on the planet Mars. We're
our own little world just now, self-contained, rounded-out, complete.

_Friday the Third_

Two things of vast importance have happened. Dinky-Dunk has packed up
and made off to Edmonton to interview some railway officials, and Percy
is back. Dinky-Dunk is so mysteriously silent as to the matter of his
trip that I'm afraid he is worried about money matters. And he asked me
if I'd mind keeping the household expenses down as low as I could,
without actual hardship, for the next few months.

As for Percy, he seemed a little constrained, but looked ever so much
better. He is quite sunburned, likes California and says we ought to
have a winter bungalow there (and Dinky-Dunk just warning me to save on
the pantry pennies!) He's brought a fastidious little old English woman
back with him as