e edge of
Nowhere and remembering that you've got your precious offspring here
under your wing and wondering how many bushels of Number-One-Hard it
will take to buy your Dinkie a riding pinto!"

"Aren't you rather tired to-night?" I asked with all the patience I
could command.

"Yes, and I'm talking about the thing that makes me tired. For you
know as well as I do that you've made that boy of yours a sort of
anesthetic. You put him on like a nose-cap, and forget the world. He's
about all you remember to think about. Why, when you look at the
clock, nowadays, it isn't ten minutes to twelve. It's always Dinkie
minutes to Dink. When you read a book you're only reading about what
your Dinkie might have done or what your Dinkie is some day to write.
When you picture the Prime Minister it's merely your Dinkie grown big,
laying down the law to a House of Parliament made up of other Dinkies,
rows and rows of 'em. When the sun shines you're wondering whether
it's warm enough for your Dinkie to walk in, and when the snow begins
to melt you're wondering whether it's soft enough for the beloved
Dinkie to mold into snowballs. When you see a girl you at once get
busy speculating over whether or not she'll ever be beautiful enough
for your Dinkie, and when one of the Crowned Heads of Europe announces
the alliance of its youngest princess you fall to pondering if Dinkie
wouldn't have made her a better husband. And when the flowers come out
in your window-box you wonder if they're fair enough to bloom beside
your Dinkie. I don't suppose I ever made a haystack that you didn't
wonder whether it wasn't going to be a grand place for Dinkie to slide
down. And when Dinkie draws a goggle-eyed man on his scribbler you see
Michael Angelo totter and Titian turn in his grave. And when Dinkie
writes a composition of thirty crooked lines on the landing of Hengist
you feel that fate did Hume a mean trick in letting him pass away
before inspecting that final word in historical record. And heaven's
just a row of Dinkies with little gold harps tucked under their wings.
And you think you're breathing air, but all you're breathing is
Dinkies, millions and millions of etherealized Dinkies. And when you
read about the famine in China you inevitably and adroitly hitch the
death of seven thousand Chinks in Yangchow on to the interests of
your immortal offspring. And I suppose Rome really came into being for
the one ultimate end that an immortal young Dinkie