tor-catalogue.

I made no sign that I had heard him. But Dinky-Dunk would never have
spoken to me that way, three short years ago. And I imagine he knows
it. For, after all, a change has been taking place, insubstantial and
unseen and subterranean, a settling of the foundations of life which
comes not only to a building as it grows older but also to the heart
as it grows older. And I'm worried about the future.

_Monday the--Monday the I-forget-what_

It's Monday, blue Monday, that's all I remember, except that there's a
rift in the lute of life at Alabama Ranch. Yesterday of course was
Sunday. And out of that day of rest Dinky-Dunk spent just five hours
over at Casa Grande. When he showed up, rather silent and constrained
and an hour and a half late for dinner, I asked him what had happened.

He explained that he'd been adjusting the carbureter on Lady Alicia's
new car.

"Don't you think, Duncan," I said, trying to speak calmly, though I
was by no means calm inside, "that it's rather a sacrifice of dignity,
holding yourself at that woman's beck and call?"

"We happen to be under a slight debt of obligation to _that woman_,"
my husband retorted, clearly more upset than I imagined he could be.

"But, Dinky-Dunk, you're not her hired man," I protested, wondering
how, without hurting him, I could make him see the thing from my
standpoint.

"No, but that's about what I'm going to become," was his altogether
unexpected answer.

"I can't say that I quite understand you," I told him, with a sick
feeling which I found it hard to keep under. Yet he must have noticed
something amusingly tragic in my attitude, for he laughed, though it
wasn't without a touch of bitterness. And laughter, under the
circumstances, didn't altogether add to my happiness.

"I simply mean that Allie's made me an offer of a hundred and fifty
dollars a month to become her ranch-manager," Dinky-Dunk announced
with a casualness that was patently forced. "And as I can't wring that
much out of this half-section, and as I'd only be four-flushing if I
let outsiders come in and take everything away from a tenderfoot, I
don't see--"

"And such a lovely tenderfoot," I interrupted.

"--I don't see why it isn't the decent and reasonable thing," concluded
my husband, without stooping to acknowledge the interruption, "to
accept that offer."

I understood, in a way, every word he was saying; yet it seemed
several minutes before t