d trundled off to a
bed and room of my own, the reaction set in. I could think more
clearly. My Dinky-Dunk didn't love me, or he'd never have left me at
such a time, no matter what his business calls may have been. The
Twins weren't quite so humorous as they seemed. There was even
something disturbingly animal-like in the birth of more offspring than
one at a time, something almost revolting in this approach to the
littering of one's young. They all tried to unedge that animality by
treating it as a joke, by confronting it with their conspiracies of
jocularity. But it would be no joke to a nursing mother in the middle
of a winter prairie with the nearest doctor twenty long miles away.

I countermanded my telegram to Dinky-Dunk at Vancouver, and cried
myself to sleep in a nice relaxing tempest of self-pity which my
"special" accepted as calmly as a tulip-bed accepts a shower. But
lawdy, lawdy, how I slept! And when I woke up and sniffed warm air and
that painty smell peculiar to new buildings, and heard the radiators
sing with steam and the windows rattle in the northeast blizzard that
was blowing, I slipped into a truer realization of the intricate
machinery of protection all about me, and thanked my lucky stars that
I wasn't in a lonely prairie shack, as I'd been when my almost
three-year-old Dinkie was born. I remembered, with little tidal waves
of contentment, that my ordeal was a thing of the past, and that I was
a mother twice over, and rather hungry, and rather impatient to get a
peek at my God-given little babes.

Then I fell to thinking rather pityingly of my forsaken little Dinkie
and wondering if Mrs. Teetzel would keep his feet dry and cook his
cream-of-wheat properly, and if Iroquois Annie would have brains
enough not to overheat the furnace and burn Casa Grande down to the
ground. Then I decided to send the wire to Dinky-Dunk, after all, for
it isn't every day in the year a man can be told he's the father of
twins....

I sent the wire, in the secret hope that it would bring my lord and
master on the run. But it was eight days later, when I was up on a
back-rest and having my hair braided, that Dinky-Dunk put in an
appearance. And when he did come he chilled me. I can't just say why.
He seemed tired and preoccupied and unnecessarily self-conscious
before the nurses when I made him hold Pee-Wee on one arm and Poppsy
on the other.

"Now kiss 'em, Daddy," I commanded. And he had to kiss them both on
their