y he was trying to
make me out. Gershom, who'd just got back with the children and was
unhitching Calamity Kate, retreated with his eyebrows up, toward the
stable. And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw nothing but
pained incredulity touched with reproof, for Poppsy is not a believer
in the indecorous. She has herself staidly intimated that she'd prefer
the rest of the family to address her as "Pauline Augusta" instead of
"Poppsy" which still so unwittingly creeps into our talk. So
hereafter we must be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already sew
a fine seam and array her seven dolls with a preciseness and neatness
which is to be highly commended.

On Saturday, when we motored into Buckhorn for supplies, I escorted
Pauline Augusta to Hunk Granby, the town barber, to have her hair cut
Dutch. Her lip quivered and she gave every indication of an outbreak,
for she was mortally afraid of that strange man and his still stranger
clipping-machine. But I spotted a concert-guitar on a bench at the
back of Hunk's emporium and as it was the noon-hour and there was no
audience, I rendered a jazz _obbligato_ to the snip of the scissors.

"Say, Birdie, you'll sure have me buck and wing dancin' if you keep
that up!" remarked the man of the shears. I merely smiled and gave him
_Texas Tommy_, _cum gusto_, whereupon he acknowledged he was having
difficulty in making his feet behave. We became quite a companionable
little family, in fact, as the bobbing process went on, and when
Dinky-Dunk called for us as he'd promised he was patently scandalized
to find his superannuated old soul-mate sight-reading _When Katy
Couldn't Katy Wouldn't_--it was a new one to me--in the second ragged
plush shaving-chair of a none too clean barber-shop festooned with
lithographs which would have made old Anthony Comstock turn in his
grave. But you have to be feathered to the toes like a ptarmigan in
this northern country so that rough ways and rough winds can't strike
a chill into you. The barber, in fact, refused to take any money for
Dutching my small daughter's hair, proclaiming that the music was more
than worth it. But my husband, with a dangerous light in his eye,
insisted on leaving four bits on the edge of the shelf loaded down
with bottled beautifiers, and escorted us out to the muddy old
devil-wagon where Dinkie sat awaiting us.

"Dinky-Dunk," I said with a perfectly straight face as we climbed in,
"what is it gives me such a myster