sed, and he chased me around the shack with
the rest of the dipperful, to keep from chilling his tummy, he
explained. Then Dinky-Dunk and I both like to give pet-names to things.
He calls me "Lady Bird" and "Gee-Gee" and sometimes "Honey," and
sometimes "Boca Chica" and "Tabby." And I call him Dinky-Dunk and The
Dour Maun, and Kitten-Cats, though for some reason or other he hates
that last name. I think he feels it's an affront to his dignity. And no
man likes a trace of mockery in a woman. But Dinky-Dunk's names are born
of affection, and I love him for them.

Even the ranch horses have all been tagged with names. There's
"Slip-Along" and "Water Light" and "Bronk" and "Patsy Crocker" and "Pick
and Shovel" and "Tumble Weed," and others that I can't remember at the
moment. And I find I'm picking up certain of Dinky-Dunk's little
habits, and dropping into the trick of looking at things from his
standpoint. I wonder if husbands and wives really _do_ get to be alike?
There are times when Dinky-Dunk seems to know just what I'm thinking,
for when he speaks he says exactly the thing I was going to ask him. And
he's inexorable in his belief that one's right shoe should always be put
on first. So am I!

_Thursday the Twenty-sixth_

Dinky-Dunk is rather pinched for ready money. He is what they call "land
poor" out here. He has big plans, but not much cash. So we shall have to
be frugal. I had decided on vast and sudden changes in this household,
but I'll have to draw in my horns a little. Luckily I have nearly two
hundred dollars of my own money left--and have never mentioned it to
Dinky-Dunk. So almost every night I study the magazine advertisements,
and the catalog of the mail-order house in Winnipeg. Each night I add to
my list of "Needs," and then go back and cross out some of the earlier
ones, as being too extravagant, for the length of my list almost gives
me heart-failure. And as I sit there thinking of what I have to do
without, I envy the women I've known in other days, the women with all
their white linen and their cut glass and silverware and their
prayer-rugs and period rooms and their white-tiled baths and their
machinery for making life so comfortable and so easy. I envy them. I put
away my list, and go to bed envying them. But, oh, I sleep so soundly,
and I wake up so buoyant in heart, so eager to get at the next day's
work, so glad to see I'm slowly getting things more ship-shape. It
doesn't leave room