n Struthers has perked up a bit, and is making furtive
preparations for a sage-tea wash in the morning.

_Tuesday the Sixteenth_

Why is life so tangled up? Why can't we be either completely happy or
completely the other way? Why must wretchedness come sandwiched in
between slices of hope and contentment, and why must happiness be
haunted by some ghostly echo of pain? And why can't people be all good
or all bad, so that the tares and the wheat never get mixed up
together and make a dismal mess of our harvest of Expectation?

These are some of the questions I've been asking myself since Duncan
went back to Calgary last night. He stayed only two days. And they
were days of terribly complicated emotions. I went to the station for
him, on Saturday, and in my impatience to be there on time found
myself with an hour and a half of waiting, an hour and a half of
wandering up and down that ugly open platform in the clear cool light
of evening. There was a hint of winter in the air, an intimidating
northern nip which made the thought of a warm home and an open fire a
consolation to the chilled heart. And I felt depressed, in spite of
everything I could do to bolster up my courage. In the first place, I
couldn't keep from thinking of Alsina Teeswater. And in the second
place, never, never on the prairie, have I watched a railway-train
come in or a railway-train pass away without feeling lonesome. It
reminds me how big is the outside world, how infinitesimal is Chaddie
McKail and her unremembered existence up here a thousand miles from
Nowhere! It humbles me. It reminds me that I have in some way failed
to mesh in with the bigger machinery of life.

I had a lump in my throat, by the time Dinky-Dunk's train pulled in
and I saw him swing down from the car-steps. I made for him through
the crowd, in fact, with my all but forgotten Australian crawl-stroke,
and accosted him with rather a briny kiss and so tight a hug that he
stood back and studied my face. He wanted to ask, I know, if anything
had happened. He was obviously startled, and just a trifle
embarrassed. My lump, by this time, was bigger than ever, but I had to
swallow it in secret. Dinky-Dunk, I found, was changed in many ways.
He was tired, and he seemed older. But he was prosperous-looking, in
brand-new raiment, and reported that luck was still with him and
everything was flourishing. Give him one year, he protested, and he'd
show them he wasn't a piker.

I wa