ited for him to ask about the children, but his mind seemed full
of his Barcona coal business. The railway was learning to treat them
half decently and the coal was coming out better than they'd hoped
for. They'd a franchise to light the town, developing their power from
the mine screenings, and what they got from this would be so much
velvet. And he had a chance to take over one of the finest houses in
Mount Royal, if he had a family along with him to excuse such
magnificence.

That final speech of his brought me up short. It was dark along the
trail, and dark in my heart. And more things than one had happened
that day to humble me. So I took one hand off the wheel and put it on
his knee.

"Do you want me to go to Calgary?" I asked him.

"That's up to you," he said, without budging an inch. He said it, in
fact, with a steel-cold finality which sent my soul cringing back into
its kennel. And the trail ahead of me seemed blacker than ever.

"I'll have to have time to think it over," I said with a composure
which was nine-tenths pretense.

"Some wives," he remarked, "are willing to help their husbands."

"I know it, Dinky-Dunk," I acknowledged, hoping against hope he'd give
me the opening I was looking for. "And I want to help, if you'll only
let me."

"I think I'm doing my part," he rather solemnly asserted. I couldn't
see his face, in the dark, but there was little hope to be wrung from
the tone of his voice. So I knew it would be best to hold my peace.

Casa Grande blazed a welcome to us, as we drove up to it, and the
children, thank heaven, were relievingly boisterous over the adventure
of their dad's return. He seemed genuinely amazed at their growth,
seemed slightly irritated at Dinkie's long stares of appraisal, and
feigned an interest in the paraded new possessions of Poppsy and her
brother--until it came to Peter's toy air-ship, which was thrust
almost bruskly aside.

And that reminds me of one thing which I am reluctant to acknowledge.
Dinky-Dunk was anything but nice to Susie. He may have his perverse
reasons for disliking everything in any way connected with Peter
Ketley, but I at least expected my husband to be agreeable to the
casual guest under his roof. Through it all, I must confess, Susie
was wonderful. She made no effort to ignore Duncan, as his ignoring of
her only too plainly merited. She remained, not only poised and
imperturbable, but impersonal and impenetrable. She found herself, I
thi