the air with genuine
Berserker madness. But along with this, as I've already said, he has
his equally sudden impulses of affection, especially when he first
wakens in the morning and his little body seems to be singing with the
pure joy of living. He'll smooth my hair, after I've lifted him from
the crib into my bed, and bury his face in the hollow of my neck and
kiss my cheek and pat my forehead and coo over me until I squeeze him
so hard he has to grunt. Then he'll probably do his best to pick my
eyes out, if I pretend to be asleep, or experiment with the end of my
nose, to see why it doesn't lift up like a door-knocker. Then he'll
snuggle down in the crook of my arm, perfectly still except for the
wriggling of his toes against my hip, and croon there with happiness
and contentment, like a ring-neck dove.

_Friday the Seventeenth_

Lady Allie couldn't have been picked quite clean to the bone by the
McKails, for she's announced her intention of buying a touring-car and
a gasoline-engine and has had a conference with Dinky-Dunk on the
matter. She also sent to Montreal for the niftiest little English
sailor suit, for Dinkie, together with a sailor hat that has
"Agamemnon" printed in gold letters on its band.

I ought to be enthusiastic about it, but I can't. Dinkie himself,
however, who calls it his "new nailor nuit"--not being yet able to
manage the sibilants--struts about in it proud as a peacock, and
refuses to sit down in his supper-chair until Ikkie has carefully
wiped off the seat of the same, to the end that the beloved nailor
nuit might remain immaculate. He'll lose his reverence for it, of
course, when he knows it better. It's a habit men have, big or little.

Lady Allie has confessed that she is succumbing to the charm of
prairie life. It ought to make her more of a woman and less of a
silk-lined idler. Dinky-Dunk still nurses the illusion that she is
delicate, and manages to get a lot of glory out of that clinging-vine
pose of hers, big oak that he is! But it is simply absurd, the way he
falls for her flattery. She's making him believe that he's a
twentieth-century St. Augustine and a Saint Christopher all rolled
into one. Poor old Dinky-Dunk, I'll have to keep an eye on him or
they'll be turning his head, for all its gray hairs. He is wax in the
hand of designing beauty, as are most of the race of man. And the fair
Allie, I must acknowledge, is dangerously appealing to the