d deliberately
lain awake and tried to trumpet my second man from the precincts which
Whinnie felt he'd already preempted. He had attempted to snore poor
Peter off the map and away from Alabama Ranch!

_Saturday the Thirtieth_

The sedatest lives, I suppose, have their occasional Big Surprises.
Life, at any rate, has just treated me to one. Lady Alicia Newland's
English maid, known as Struthers, arrived at Alabama Ranch yesterday
afternoon and asked if I'd take her in. She'd had some words, she
said, with her mistress, and didn't propose to be treated like the
scum of the earth by anybody.

So the inevitable has come about. America, the liberalizer, has touched
the worthy Struthers with her wand of democracy and transformed her
from a silent machine of service into a Vesuvian female with a mind and
a voice of her own.

I told Struthers, who was still a bit quavery and excited, to sit down
and we'd talk the matter over, for rustling maids, in a land where
they're as scarce as hen's teeth, is a much graver crime than rustling
cattle. Yet if Lady Allie had taken my husband away from me, I didn't
see why, in the name of poetic justice, I shouldn't appropriate her
hand-maid.

And Struthers, I found, was quite definite as to her intentions. She
is an expert needle-woman, can do plain cooking, and having been a
nurse-maid in her younger days, is quite capable of looking after
children, even American children. I winced at that, naturally, and
winced still harder when she stipulated that she must have four
o'clock tea every afternoon, and every alternate Sunday morning off
for the purpose of "saging" her hair, which was a new one on me. But I
weighed the pros and cons, very deliberately, and discussed her
predicament very candidly, and the result is that Struthers is now
duly installed at Alabama Ranch. Already, in fact, that efficient hand
of hers has left its mark on the shack. Her muffins this morning were
above reproach and to-morrow we're to have Spotted Dog pudding. But
already, I notice, she is casting sidelong glances in the direction of
poor Peter, to whom, this evening at supper, she deliberately and
unquestionably donated the fairest and fluffiest quarter of the lemon
pie. I have no intention of pumping the lady, but I can see that there
are certain matters pertaining to Casa Grande which she is not averse
to easing her mind of. I am not quite sure, in fact, that I could find
it p