r in the
kitchen; but that is Susan's favourite chair, too, and when she wants
it, out Jims must go. The last time she put him out of it he turned
around and asked solemnly, 'When you are dead, Susan, can I sit in that
chair?' Susan thought it quite dreadful, and I think that was when she
began to feel anxiety about his possible ancestry. The other night I
took Jims with me for a walk down to the store. It was the first time
he had ever been out so late at night, and when he saw the stars he
exclaimed, 'Oh, Willa, see the big moon and all the little moons!' And
last Wednesday morning, when he woke up, my little alarm clock had
stopped because I had forgotten to wind it up. Jims bounded out of his
crib and ran across to me, his face quite aghast above his little blue
flannel pyjamas. 'The clock is dead,' he gasped, 'oh Willa, the clock
is dead.'

"One night he was quite angry with both Susan and me because we would
not give him something he wanted very much. When he said his prayers he
plumped down wrathfully, and when he came to the petition 'Make me a
good boy' he tacked on emphatically, 'and please make Willa and Susan
good, 'cause they're not.'

"I don't go about quoting Jims's speeches to all I meet. That always
bores me when other people do it! I just enshrine them in this old
hotch-potch of a journal!

"This very evening as I put Jims to bed he looked up and asked me
gravely, 'Why can't yesterday come back, Willa?'

"Oh, why can't it, Jims? That beautiful 'yesterday' of dreams and
laughter--when our boys were home--when Walter and I read and rambled
and watched new moons and sunsets together in Rainbow Valley. If it
could just come back! But yesterdays never come back, little Jims--and
the todays are dark with clouds--and we dare not think about the
tomorrows."

11th December 1917

"Wonderful news came today. The British troops captured Jerusalem
yesterday. We ran up the flag and some of Gertrude's old sparkle
came back to her for a moment.

"'After all,' she said, 'it is worth while to live in the days which
see the object of the Crusades attained. The ghosts of all the
Crusaders must have crowded the walls of Jerusalem last night, with
Coeur-de-lion at their head.'

"Susan had cause for satisfaction also.

"'I am so thankful I can pronounce Jerusalem and Hebron,' she said.
'They give me a real comfortable feeling after Przemysl and
Brest-Litovsk! Well, we have got the Turks on the run, at least, a