s
again!

_Wednesday the Thirty-First_

Susie has promised to stay with us until after Christmas. And the
holidays, I realize, are only a few weeks away. Struthers is knitting
a sweater of flaming red and rather grimly acknowledged, when I pinned
her down, that it was for Whinstane Sandy. There was a snow-flurry
Sunday, and Gershom took Susie riding in the old cutter, scratching
grittily along the half-covered trails but apparently enjoying it. My
poor little Poppsy, who rather idolizes Gershom, is transparently
jealous of his attentions to Susie. Yet Gershom, I know, is nice to
Susie and nothing more. He is still my loyal but carefully restrained
knight. It's a shame, I suppose, to bobweasel him the way I
occasionally do. But I can't quite help it. His goody-goodiness is as
provocative to my baser nature as a red flag to an Andulasian bull.
And a woman who was once reckoned as a heart-breaker has to keep her
hand in with _something_. I've got to convince myself that the last
shot hasn't gone from the locker which Duncan Argyll McKail once
rifled. I spoiled Gershom's supper for him the other night by asking
what it was made some people have such a mysterious influence over
other people. And I caught him up short, last Sunday morning, when he
tried to argue that I was a sort of paragon in petticoats.

"Don't you run away with the idea I'm that kind of an angel," I
promptly assured him. "I'm an outlaw, from saddle to sougan, and I can
buck like a bear fightin' bees. I'm a she-devil crow-hopping around in
skirts. And I could bu'st every commandment slap-bang across my knee,
once I got started, and leave a trail of crime across the fair face of
nature that would make an old Bow-Gun vaquero's back-hair stand up.
I'm just a woman, Gershom, a little lonely and a little loony, and
there's so much backed-up bad in me that once the dam gives way
there'll be a hell-roaring old whoop-up along these dusty old
trails!"

Gershom turned white.

"But there's your little ones to think of," he quaveringly reminded
me.

"Yes, there's my little ones to think of," I echoed, wondering where
I'd heard that familiar old refrain before. My bark, after all, is
much worse than my bite. About all I can do is take things out in
talk. I'm only a faded beauty, brooding over my antique adventures as
a heart-breaker. But I know of one heart I'd still like to break--if I
had the power. No; not break; but bend up to the cracking point!