se.

It may sound like a busy day, but it was, on the whole, merely an
average one. Yet I'll wager a bushel of number one Northern winter
wheat to a doughnut ring that if Ibsen had written an epilogue for
_The Doll's House_, Nora would have come crawling back to her home and
her kiddies, in the end.

_Wednesday the Twenty-second_

Lady Allie is either dunderheaded or designing. She has calmly
suggested that her rural phone-line be extended from Casa Grande to
Alabama Ranch so that she can get in touch with Dinky-Dunk when she
needs his help and guidance. Even as it is, he's called on about five
times a week, to run to the help of that she-remittance-man in
corduroy and dog-skin gauntlets and leggings.

She seems thunderstruck to find that she can't get the hired help she
wants, at a moment's notice. Dinky-Dunk says she's sure to be imposed
on, and that although she's as green as grass, she's really anxious to
learn. He feels that it's his duty to stand between her and the
outsiders who'd be only too ready to impose on her ignorance.

She rode over to see the Twins yesterday, who were sleeping out under
the fly-netting I'd draped over them, the pink-tinted kind they put
over fruit-baskets in the city markets and shops. Poppsy and Pee-Wee
looked exactly like two peaches, rosy and warm and round.

Lady Allie stared at them with rather an abstracted eye, and then,
idiot that she is, announced that she'd like to have twelve. But talk
is cheap. The modern woman who's had even half that number has pretty
well given up her life to her family. It's remarkable, by the way, the
silent and fathomless pity I've come to have for childless women. The
thought of a fat spinster fussing over a French poodle or a faded
blond forlornly mothering a Pekinese chow gives me a feeling that is
at least first cousin to sea-sickness.

Lady Allie, I find, has very fixed and definite theories as to the
rearing of children. They should never be rocked or patted, or be
given a "comfort," and they should be in bed for the night at sundown.
There was a time I had a few theories of my own, but I've pretty well
abandoned them. I've been taught, in this respect, to travel light, as
the overland voyageurs of this country would express it, to travel
light and leave the final resort to instinct.

_Friday the Twenty-fourth_

I was lazy last night, so both the ink-pot and its owner had a rest.