t self-pity which is good for neither
man nor beast.

Yet Dinky-Dunk is not all hardness. He surprises me, now and then, by
disturbing little gestures of boyishness. He announced to me the other
night that the only way to get any use out of a worn-out husband was
to revamp him, with the accent on the vamp. I understood what he
meant, and I think I actually changed color a trifle. But I know of
nothing more desolating than trying to make love to a man either
against his will or against your own will. It would be a terrible
thing to have him tell you there was no longer any kick in your
kisses. So I remain on my dignity. I am companionable, and nothing
more. When we were saying good-by, the last time he went off to the
city, and he looked up at my perfunctory and quite meaningless peck on
his cheek, I felt myself blushing before his quiet and half-quizzical
stare. Then he laughed a little as he turned away and pulled on his
gauntlets. "The sweeter the champagne, I suppose, the colder it should
be served!" he rather cryptically remarked as he climbed into the
waiting car. And yesterday he let his soul emerge from its tent of
reticence when he climbed up on the wagon-box to stare out over his
sea of all but ripened wheat. "Come, money!" he said, with his arms
stretched out before him. Now, that was a trick which he had caught
from my little Dinkie. I don't know how or where the boy first picked
up the habit, but when he particularly wants something he stands
solemnly out in the open, with his two little arms outstretched, as
though he were supplicating Heaven itself, and says "Come,
jack-knife!" or "Come, jelly-roll!" or "Come, rain!" according to his
particular desires of the particular moment. I think he really caught
it from an illustration in _The Arabian Nights_, from the picture of
Cassim grandiloquently proclaiming "Open Sesame!" He is an imaginative
little beggar. "Mummy," he said to me the other night, "see all the
moonlight that's been spilled on the grass!" But children are made
that way. Even my sage little Poppsy, when a marigold-leaf fell in the
bowl of our solitary gold-fish, cried out to me: "See, Mummy, our fish
has had a baby!" Sex is still an enigma to her, as much an enigma as
it was away last spring when, not being quite sure whether her new
kitten was a little boy-cat or a little girl-cat, she sagaciously
christened it "Willie-Alice." And a few weeks later, when the
unmistakable appearance of tail-fea