nts a dozen.

And speaking of barter reminds me that both Dinkie and the Twins are
growing out of their duds, and heaven knows when I'll find time to make
more for them. They'll probably have to promenade around like Ikkie's
ancestors. I've even run out of safety-pins. And since the enduring
necessity for the safety-pin is evidenced by the fact that it's even
found on the baby-mummies of ancient Egypt, and must be a good four
thousand years old, I've had Whinnie supply me with some home-made ones,
manufactured out of hair-pins.... My little Dinkie, I notice, is going
to love animals. He seems especially fond of horses, and is fearless
when beside them, or on them, or even under them--for he walked calmly
in under the belly of Jail-Bird, who could have brained him with one
pound of his wicked big hoof. But the beast seemed to know that it was a
friend in that forbidden quarter, and never so much as moved until
Dinkie had been rescued. It won't be long now before Dinkie has a pinto
of his own and will go bobbing off across the prairie-floor, I suppose,
like a monkey on a circus-horse. Even now he likes nothing better than
coming with his mother while she gathers her "clutch" of eggs. He can
scramble into a manger--where my unruly hens persist in making an
occasional nest--like a marmoset. The delight on his face at the
discovery of even two or three "cackle-berries," as Whinnie calls them,
is worth the occasional breakage and yolk-stained rompers. For I share
in that delight myself, since egg-gathering always gives me the feeling
that I'm partaking of the bounty of Nature, that I'm getting something
for next-to-nothing. It's the same impulse, really, which drives city
women to the bargain-counter and the auction-room, the sublimated
passion to adorn the home teepee-pole with the fruits of their cunning!

_Tuesday the Twenty-fifth_

Yesterday I teamed in to Buckhorn, for supplies. And as I drove down
the main street of that squalid little western town I must have looked
like something the crows had been roosting on. But just as I was
swinging out of Syd Woodward's store-yard I caught sight of Lady Allie
in her big new car, drawn up in front of the modestly denominated "New
York Emporium." What made me stare, however, was the unexpected vision
of Duncan Argyll McKail, emerging from the aforesaid "Emporium" laden
down with parcels. These he carried out to the car and was dutifully
stowing away