ath as I am to
acknowledge it. He's served to knock the moss off my soul by more or
less indirectly reminding me that all work and no play could make
Chaddie McKail a very dull girl indeed.

I was rather afraid, at one time, that he was going to spoil it all by
making love to me, after the manner of young Bud Dyruff, from the Cowen
Ranch, who, because I waded bare-kneed into a warm little slough-end
when the horses were having their noonday meal, assumed that I could be
persuaded to wade with equal celerity into indiscriminate affection.
That rudimentary and ingenuous youth, in fact, became more and more
offensive in his approaches, until finally I turned on him. "Are you
trying to make love to me?" I demanded. "The surest thing you know," he
said with a rather moonish smile. "Then let me tell you something," I
hissed out at him, with my nose within six inches of his, "I'm a
high-strung hell-cat, I am. I'm a bob-cat, and I'm not aching to be
pawed by you or any other hare-brained he-mutt. So now, right from this
minute, keep your distance! Is that clear? Keep your distance, or I'll
break your head in with this neck-yoke!"

Poor Bud! That rather blighted the flower of Bud's tender young
romance, and to this day he effects a wide detour when he happens to
meet me on the trail or in the byways of Buckhorn.

But Peter Ketley is not of the Bud Dyruff type. He is more complex,
and, accordingly, more disturbing. For I can see admiration in his
eye, even though he no longer expresses it by word of mouth. And there
is something tonic to any woman in knowing that a man admires her. In
my case, in fact, it's so tonic that I've ordered some benzoin and
cucumber-cream, and think a little more about how I'm doing my hair,
and argue with myself that it's a woman's own fault if she runs to
seed before she's seen thirty. I may be the mother of three children,
but I still have a hankering after personal power--and that comes to
women through personal attractiveness, disquieting as it may be to
have to admit it. We can't be big strong men and conquer through
force, but our frivolous little bodies can house the triumphant
weaknesses which make men forget their strength.

_Sunday the Fourteenth_

I've had a talk with Peter. It simply _had_ to come, for we couldn't
continue to play-act and evade realities. The time arrived for getting
down to brass tacks. And even now the brass tacks aren't as clear-cut
a