ughty Irish spirit with certain ideas of caste which
can't be imported into the Canadian West, where the hired man is every
whit as good as his master--as that master will tragically soon find out
if he tries to make his help eat at second table! At any rate, Percy and
potato-lipped Terry developed friction which ended up in every promise
of a fight, only Dinky-Dunk arrived in the nick of time and took Terry
off his harassed neighbor's hands. I told him he had rather the habit of
catching people on the bounce. But I am reserving my opinion of Terry
Dillon. We are a happy family here, and I want no trouble-makers in my
neighborhood.

I have been studying some of the New York magazines, going rather
hungrily through their advertisements where such lovely layettes are
described. My poor little Dinky-Dink's things are so plain and rough and
meager. I envy those city mothers with all those beautiful linens and
laces. But my little Spartan man-child has never known a single day's
sickness. And some day he'll show 'em!

_Thursday the Fourteenth_

When Olie came in after dinner yesterday I asked him where my husband
was. Olie, after some hesitation, admitted that he was out in the
stable. I asked just what Dinky-Dunk was doing there, for I'd noticed
that after each meal he slipped silently away. Again Olie hesitated.
Then he finally admitted that he thought maybe my lord was out there
smoking. So I went out, and there I found my poor old Dinky-Dunk sitting
on a grain-box puffing gloomily away at his old pipe. For a minute or
two he didn't see me, so I went right over to him. "What does this
mean?" I demanded.

"Why?" he rather guiltily equivocated.

"Why are you smoking out here?"

"I--er--I rather thought you might think it wouldn't be good for the
Boy!" He looked pathetic as he said that, I don't know why, though I
loved him for it. He made me think of a king who'd been dethroned, an
outsider, a man without a home. It brought a lump into my throat.

I wormed my way up close to him on the grain-box, so that he had to hold
me to keep from falling off the end. "Listen to me," I commanded. "You
are my True Love and my Kaikobad and my Man-God and my Soul-Mate! And no
baby is ever going to come between me and you!"

"You shouldn't say those awful things," he declared, but he did it only
half-heartedly.

"But I want you to sit and smoke with me, beloved, the same as you
always did," I told him. "We can leave the w