cknowledged his
niece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter was
still free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow he
emulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the most
absurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. The
widow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle's
eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life might
in the end affect his intellect!

The thought of Peter marrying rather gave me a shock. It was like
being told by some authority in astronomy that your earth was about to
collide with Wernecke's Comet. And, vain peacock that I was, I rather
liked to think of Peter going through life mourning for me, alone and
melancholy and misogynistic for the rest of his days! Yet there must
be dozens, there must be hundreds, of attractive girls along the paths
which he travels. I found the courage to mention this fact to Susie,
who merely laughed and said her Uncle Peter would probably be saved by
his homeliness. But I can't say that I ever regarded Peter Ketley as
homely. He may never carry off a blue ribbon from a beauty show, but
he has the sort of face that a woman of sense can find tremendous
appeal in. Your flapper type, I suppose, will always succumb to the
curled Romeo, but it's the ruggeder and stronger man with the bright
mind and the kindly heart who will always appeal to the clearer-eyed
woman who has come to know life.... Susie has told me, by the way,
that Josie Langdon and her husband quarreled on their honeymoon,
quarreled the first week in Paris and right across the Continent for
the momentous reason that Josie _insisted on putting sugar in her
claret_!

I've been doing a good deal of thinking, the last few hours. I've been
wondering if I'm a Lost Cause. And I've been wondering why women
should want to put sugar in their claret. If it's made to be bitter,
why not accept the bitterness, and let it go at that?

_Friday the Twelfth_

Dinky-Dunk has just sent word that he will be home to-morrow night and
asks if I'll mind motoring in to Buckhorn for him.

It impresses me as a non-committal little message, yet it means more
to me than I imagined. _My husband is coming home._

Susie has been eying me all afternoon, with a pucker of perplexity
about her lapis-lazuli eyes. We are busy, getting things to rights.
And I've made an appallingly long list of what I must buy in Buckhorn
to-morrow. Eve