gan to think I'd take root there.

But once I and my bairns were back here at Casa Grande I could see
that they were right. In the first place the trip was tiring, too
tiring to rehearse in detail. Then a vague feeling of neglect and
desolation took possession of me, for I missed the cool-handed
efficiency of that ever-dependable "special." I almost surrendered to
funk, in fact, when both Poppsy and Pee-Wee started up a steady duet
of crying. I sat down and began to sniffle myself, but my sense of
humor, thank the Lord, came back and saved the day. There was
something so utterly ridiculous in that briny circle, soon augmented
and completed by the addition of Dinkie, who apparently felt as lonely
and overlooked as did his spineless and sniffling mother.

So I had to tighten the girths of my soul. I took a fresh grip on
myself and said: "Look here, Tabbie, this is never going to do. This
is not the way Horatius held the bridge. This is not the spirit that
built Rome. So, up, Guards, and at 'em! Excelsior! _Audaces fortuna
juvat!_"

So I mopped my eyes, and readjusted the Twins, and did what I could to
placate Dinkie, who continues to regard his little brother and sister
with a somewhat hostile eye. One of my most depressing discoveries on
getting back home, in fact, was to find that Dinkie has grown away
from me in my absence. At first he even resented my approaches, and he
still stares at me, now and then, across a gulf of perplexity. But the
ice is melting. He's beginning to understand, after all, that I'm his
really truly mother and that he can come to me with his troubles. He's
lost a good deal of his color, and I'm beginning to suspect that his
food hasn't been properly looked after during the last few weeks. It's
a patent fact, at any rate, that my house hasn't been properly looked
after. Iroquois Annie, that sullen-eyed breed servant of ours, will
never have any medals pinned on her pinny for neatness. I'd love to
ship her, but heaven only knows where we'd find any one to take her
place. And I simply _must_ have help, during the next few months.

Casa Grande, by the way, looked such a little dot on the wilderness,
as we drove back to it, that a spear of terror pushed its way through
my breast as I realized that I had my babies to bring up away out here
on the edge of this half-settled no-man's land. If only our dreams had
come true! If only the plans of mice and men didn't go so aft agley!
If only the railway h