one can take a mother's place, with a boy like
that. No one could understand him, and make allowances for him, and
explain things to him, as his own mother could. I've been thinking
about that, all afternoon as I ironed his waists and his blue
flannellet pajamas with frogs on like his dad's. And I've been
thinking of it all evening as I patched his brown corduroy knickers
and darned his little stockings and balled them up in a neat little
row. I tried to picture myself as packing them away in a trunk, and
putting in beside them all the clothes he would need, and the books
that he could never get along without, and the childish little
treasures he'd have to carry away to his new home. But it was too much
for me. There was one thing, I began to see, which could never, never
happen. I could never willingly be parted from my Dinkie. I could
think of nothing to pay me up for losing him. And he needed me as I
needed him. For good or bad, we'd have to stick together. Mother and
son, together in some way we'd have to sink or swim!

_Wednesday the Thirtieth_

The tension has been relieved by Dinky-Dunk going off to Calgary.
Along with him he has taken a rather formidable amount of his personal
belongings. But he explains this by stating that business will keep
him in the city for at least six or seven weeks. He has been talking a
good deal about the Barcona coal-mine of late, and the last night he
was with us he talked to Gershom for an hour and more about the
advantages of those newer mines over the Drumheller. The newer field
has a solid slate roof which makes drifting safe and easy, a finer
type of coal, and a chance for big money once the railway runs in its
spur and the officials wake up to the importance of giving them the
cars they need. The whole country, Dinky-Dunk claims, is underlaid
with coal, and our province alone is estimated to contain almost
seventeen per cent. of the world's known supply. And my lord and
master expressed the intention of being in on the clean-up.

I don't know how much of this was intended for my ears. But it served
to disquiet me, for reasons I couldn't quite discern. And the same
vague depression crept over me when Dinky-Dunk took his departure. I
kept up my air of blitheness, it is true, to the last moment, and was
as casual as you please in helping Duncan to pack and reminding him to
put his shaving-things in his bag and making sure the last button was
on his pajamas. I kissed h