acknowledged that there were more ways than one of
murderin' infant children. _Her_ ideal along this line, I've
discovered, is slow asphyxiation in a sort of Dutch-oven made of an
eider-down comforter, with as much air as possible shut off from their
uncomfortable little bodies. But the Oracle is going, and I intend to
bring up my babies in my own way. For I know a little more about the
game now than I did when little Dinkie made his appearance in this
vale of tears. And whatever my babies may or may not be, they are at
least healthy little tikes.

_Sunday the Twenty-second_

I seem to be fitting into things again, here at Casa Grande. I've got
my strength back, and an appetite like a Cree pony, and the day's work
is no longer a terror to me. I'm back in the same old rut, I was going
to say--but it is not the same. There is a spirit of unsettledness
about it all which I find impossible to define, an air of something
impending, of something that should be shunned as long as possible.
Perhaps it's merely a flare-back from my own shaken nerves. Or perhaps
it's because I haven't been able to get out in the open air as much as
I used to. I am missing my riding. And Paddy, my pinto, will give us a
morning of it, when we try to get a saddle on his scarred little back,
for it's half a year now since he has had a bit between his teeth.

It's Dinky-Dunk that I'm really worrying over, though I don't know
why. I heard him come in very quietly last night as I was tucking
little Dinkie up in his crib. I went to the nursery door, half hoping
to hear my lord and master sing out his old-time "Hello, Lady-Bird!"
or "Are you there, Babushka?" But instead of that he climbed the
stairs, rather heavily, and passed on down the hall to the little room
he calls his study, his sanctum-sanctorum where he keeps his desk and
papers and books--and the duck-guns, so that Dinkie can't get at them.
I could hear him open the desk-top and sit down in the squeaky Bank of
England chair.

When I was sure that Dinkie was off, for good, I tiptoed out and shut
the nursery door. Even big houses, I began to realize as I stood there
in the hall, could have their drawbacks. In the two-by-four shack
where we'd lived and worked and been happy before Casa Grande was
built there was no chance for one's husband to shut himself up in his
private boudoir and barricade himself away from his better-half. So I
decided, all of a sudden, to b