he real meaning of a somewhat startling
situation seeped through to my brain.

"But surely, if we get a crop," I began. It was, however, a lame
beginning. And like most lame beginnings, it didn't go far.

"How are we going to get a crop when we can't even raise money enough
to get a tractor?" was Dinky-Dunk's challenge. "When we haven't help,
and we're short of seed-grain, and we can't even get a gang-plow on
credit?"

It didn't sound like my Dinky-Dunk of old, for I knew that he was
equivocating and making excuses, that he was engineering our ill luck
into an apology for worse conduct. But I was afraid of myself, even
more than I was afraid of Dinky-Dunk. And the voice of Instinct kept
whispering to me to be patient.

"Why couldn't we sell off some of the steers?" I valiantly suggested.

"It's the wrong season for selling steers," Dinky-Dunk replied with a
ponderous sort of patience. "And besides, those cattle don't belong to
me."

"Then whose are they?" I demanded.

"They're yours," retorted Dinky-Dunk, and I found his hair-splitting,
at such a time, singularly exasperating.

"I rather imagine they belonged to the family, if you intend it to
remain a family."

He winced at that, as I had proposed that he should.

"It seems to be getting a dangerously divided one," he flung back,
with a quick and hostile glance in my direction.

I was ready to fly to pieces, like a barrel that's lost its hoops. But
a thin and quavery and over-disturbing sound from the swing-box out on
the sleeping-porch brought me up short. It was a pizzicato note which
I promptly recognized as the gentle Pee-Wee's advertisement of
wakefulness. So I beat a quick and involuntary retreat, knowing only
too well what I'd have ahead of me if Poppsy joined in to make that
solo a duet.

But Pee-Wee refused to be silenced, and what Dinky-Dunk had just said
felt more and more like a branding-iron against my breast. So I
carried my wailing infant back to the dinner-table where my husband
still stood beside his empty chair. The hostile eye with which he
regarded the belcantoing Pee-Wee reminded me of the time he'd spoken
of his own off-spring as "squalling brats." And the memory wasn't a
tranquillizing one. It was still another spur roweling me back to the
ring of combat.

"Then you've decided to take that position?" I demanded as I surveyed
the cooling roast-beef and the fallen Yorkshire pudding.

"As soon as they can fix up my sleeping-quarte