wins and wheeled them out to the kitchen, where I gave
them hot peppermint and rubbed their backs and quieted them down
again.

I suppose there's no such thing as a perfect husband. That's a lesson
we've all got to learn, the same as all children, apparently, have to
find out that acorns and horse-chestnuts aren't edible. For the nap
wears off men the same as it does off clothes. I dread to have to
write it down, but I begin to detect thinnesses in Dinky-Dunk, and a
disturbing little run or two in the even web of his character. But he
knows when he's played Indian and attempts oblique and rather
shamefaced efforts to make amends, later on, when it won't be too
noticeable. Last night, as I sat sewing, our little Dinkie must have
had a bad dream, for he wakened from a sound sleep with a scream of
terror. Dinky-Dunk went to him first, and took him up and sang to him,
and when I glanced in I saw a rumply and tumbly and sleepy-eyed tot
with his kinky head against his father's shoulder. As I took up my
sewing again and heard Dinky-Dunk singing to his son, it seemed a
proud and happy and contented sort of voice. It rose and fell in that
next room, in a sort of droning bass, and for the life of me I can't
tell why, but as I stopped in my sewing and sat listening to that
father singing to his sleepy-eyed first-born, it brought the sudden
tears to my eyes. It has been a considerable length of time, _en
passant_, since I found myself sitting down and pumping the brine. I
must be getting hardened in my old age.

_Tuesday the Fourteenth_

Lady Allie sent over for Dinky-Dunk yesterday morning, to fix the
windmill at Casa Grande. They'd put it out of commission in the first
week, and emptied the pressure-tank, and were without water, and were
as helpless as a couple of canaries. We have a broken windmill of our
own, right here at home, but Diddums went meekly enough, although he
was in the midst of his morning work--and work is about to loom big
over this ranch, for we're at last able to get on the land. And the
sooner you get on the land, in this latitude, the surer you are of
your crop. We daren't shave down any margins of chance. We need that
crop....

I am really beginning to despair of Iroquois Annie. She is the only
thing I can get in the way of hired help out here, and yet she is
hopeless. She is sullen and wasteful, and she has never yet learned to
be patient with the children. I try to soft