n the world than Chaddie McKail and her
philandering old husband. For during that interregnum of parental
preoccupation Dinkie and Poppsy had essayed to toboggan down the lower
half of the front-stairs in an empty drawer commandeered from my
bedroom dresser. Their descent, apparently, had been about as
precipitate as that of their equally adventurous sire down the treads
of my respect, for they had landed in a heap on the hardwood floor of
the hall and I found Dinkie with an abraded shin-bone and Poppsy with
a cut lip. My Poppsy was more frightened at the sight of blood than
actually hurt by her fall, and Dinkie betrayed a not unnatural
tendency to enlarge on his injuries in extenuation of his offense. But
that suddenly imposed demand for first-aid took my mind out of the
darker waters in which it had been wallowing, and by the time I had
comforted my kiddies and completed my ministrations Dinky-Dunk had
quietly escaped from the house and my accusatory stares by clapping on
his hat and going out to the stables....

And that's the scene which keeps pacing back and forth between the
bars of my brain like a jaguar in a circus-cage. That's the scene I've
been living over, for the last few days, thinking of all the more
brilliant things I might have said and the more expedient things I
might have done. And that's the scene which has been working like
yeast at the bottom of my sodden batter of contentment, making me feel
that I'd swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment couldn't find
some relief in expression. So after three long years and more of
silence I'm turning back to this, the journal of one irresponsible old
Chaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy and who has in some way
missed the pot of gold that they told her was to be found at the
rainbow's end.

It seems incredible, as I look back, that more than three, long years
should slip away without the penning of one line in this, the
safety-valve of my soul. But the impulse to write rather slipped away
from me. It wasn't that there was so little to record, for life is
always life. But when it burns clearest it seems to have the trick of
consuming its own smoke and leaving so very little ash. The crowded
even tenor of existence goes on, with its tidal ups and downs, too
listlessly busy to demand expression. Then the shock of tempest comes,
and it's only after we're driven out of them that we realize we've
been drifting so long in the doldrums of life. Then i