said, "Hello,
Mummy" and smiled awkwardly. But after he had climbed up into the car
and wormed down between Pauline Augusta and me, and after I had tucked
the old bear-robe about them and called out to Gershom that I'd carry
my kiddies home, I could feel Dinkie's arm push shyly in behind my
back and work its way as far around my waist as it was able to reach.
He didn't speak. But his solemn little face gazed up at me, with its
habitual hungry look, and I could see the hazel specks in the brown
iris of the upturned eye as the arm tightened its hold on me. It made
me ridiculously happy. For I knew that my boy loved me. And I love
him. I love him so much that it brings a tapering spear-head of pain
into my heart, and at the very moment I'm so happy I feel a tear just
under the surface.

_Sunday the Tenth_

I have been reading Peter's latest letter to Dinkie, reading it for
the second time. It is not so frolicsome as many of its fellows, but
it impresses me as typical of its sender.

"I've to-day told fourteen cents' worth of postage-stamps to carry
out to you, dear Dinkie, a copy of my own _Tales from Homer_,
which may be muddy with a few big words but which the next year or
two will surely see tramped down into easier going. You may not
like it now, but later on, I know, you will like it better. For it
tells of heroes and battles and travels which only a boy can
really understand. It tells of the wanderings and adventures of
strong and simple-hearted men, men who are as scarce, nowadays, as
the shining helmets they used to wear. It tells of women superb
and simple and lovely as goddesses, such as your own prairie might
give birth to, such as your own mother must always seem to us. It
tells of flashing temples and cities of marble overlooking singing
seas of sapphire, of stately ships venturing over dark waters and
landing on unknown islands, of siege and sword-fights and caves
and giants and sea-goddesses and magic songs, and all that
sunnier and simpler life which the world, as a prosaic old
grown-up, has left behind....

"But I'm wrong in this, perhaps, for out in the land where you
live there is still largeness and the gold-green ache of wonder
beyond every sky-line. And I can't help envying you, Dinkie, for
being a part of that world which is so much more heroic than mine.
I live where a very shabby line of horse-cars used to run; and you
live where the buffa