, out loud, "Home! My home!" And
out of a clear sky, for no earthly reason, I began to cry like a baby.
Women are such fools, sometimes! I told Dinky-Dunk we must get books,
good books, and spend the long winter evenings reading together, to keep
from going to seed.

He said, "All right, Gee-Gee," and patted my knee. Then we loped on
along the trail toward the lonely little black dot ahead of us. But I
hung on to Dinky-Dunk's arm, all the rest of the way, until we pulled up
beside the shack, and poor old Olie, with a frying-pan in his hand,
stood silhouetted against the light of the open door.

_Monday the Sixth_

The last few days I've been nothing but a two-footed retriever,
scurrying off and carrying things back home with me. There have been
rains, but the weather is still glorious. And I've discovered such heaps
and heaps of mushrooms over at the old Titchborne Ranch. They're thick
all around the corral and in the pasture there. I am now what your
English lord and master would call "a perfect seat" on Paddy, and every
morning I ride over after my basketful of _Agaricus Campestris_--that
ought to be in the plural, but I've forgotten how! We have them creamed
on toast; we have them fried in butter; and we have them in soup--and
such beauties! I'm going to try and can some for winter and spring use.
But the finest part of the mushroom is the finding it. To ride into a
little white city that has come up overnight and looks like an
encampment of fairy soldiers, to see the milky white domes against the
vivid green of the prairie-grass, to catch sight of another clump of
them, suddenly, like stars against an emerald sky, a hundred yards away,
to inhale the clean morning air, and feel your blood tingle, and hear
the prairie-chickens whir and the wild-duck scolding along the
coulee-edges--I tell you, Matilda Anne, it's worth losing a little of
your beauty sleep to go through it! I'm awake even before Dinky-Dunk,
and I brought him out of his dreams this morning by poking his teeth
with my little finger and saying:

"Twelve white horses
On a red hill--"

and I asked him if he knew what it was, and he gave the right answer,
and said he hadn't heard that conundrum since he was a boy.

All afternoon I've been helping Dinky-Dunk put up a barb-wire fence.
Barb-wire is nearly as hard as a woman to handle. Dinky-Dunk is fencing
in some of the range, for a sort of cattle-run for our two milk-cows. He
says it's only