somewhere down in the back seat, when he happened to look
up and catch sight of me as I swung by in my wagon-box. He turned a
sort of dull brick-red, and pretended to be having a lot of trouble
with getting those parcels where they ought to be. But he looked
exactly like a groom. And he knew it. And he knew that I knew he knew
it. And if he was miserable, which I hope he was, I'm pretty sure he
wasn't one-half so miserable as I was--and as I am. "_Damn that
woman!_" I caught myself saying, out loud, after staring at my mottled
old map in my dressing-table mirror.

I've been watching the sunset to-night, for a long time, and thinking
about things. It was one of those quiet and beautiful prairie sunsets
which now and then flood you with wonder, in spite of yourself, and
give you an achey little feeling in the heart. It was a riot of orange
and Roman gold fading out into pale green, with misty opal and
pearl-dust along the nearer sky-line, then a big star or two, and then
silence, the silence of utter peace and beauty. But it didn't bring
peace to my soul. I could remember watching just such a sunset with my
lord and master beside me, and turning to say: "Don't you sometimes
feel, Lover, that you were simply made for joy and rapture in moments
like this? Don't you feel as though your body were a harp that could
throb and sing with the happiness of life?"

And I remembered the way my Dunkie had lifted up my chin and kissed
me.

But that seemed a long, long time ago. And I wasn't in tune with the
Infinite. And I felt lonely and old and neglected, with callouses on
my hands and the cords showing in my neck, and my nerves not exactly
what they ought to be. For Sunday, which is reckoned as a day of rest,
had been a long and busy day for me. Dinkie had been obstreperous and
had eaten most of the paint off his Noah's Ark, and had later burnt
his fingers pulling my unbaked loaf-cake out of the oven, after
eventually tiring of breaking the teeth out of my comb, one by one.
Poppsy and Pee-Wee had been peevish and disdainful of each other's
society, and Iroquois Annie had gruntingly intimated that she was
about fed up on trekking the floor with wailing infants. But I'd had
my week's mending to do, and what was left of the ironing to get
through and Whinnie's work-pants to veneer with a generous new patch,
and thirteen missing buttons to restore to the kiddies' different
garments. My back ached, my finger-bones were tired, and the