ose, drives
me to plain speaking and compels me to clear thinking. But even as I
write these words to you, I realize that it isn't really a matter of
thought or speech. It's a matter of feeling. And the one thing I feel
is that I need you and want you; that no one, that nothing, can ever
take your place.... I thought I could write a great deal more. But I
find I can't. I seem to have said everything. It _is_ everything,
really. For I love you, Dinky-Dunk, more than everything in life.
Perhaps I haven't shown it very much, of late, but it's there, trying
to hide its silly old ostrich-head behind a pebble of hurt pride. So
let's turn the page and start over. Let's start with a clean slate,
before we lose the chance. Come back to me. I'm very unhappy. I find it
hard to write. It's only that big ache in my heart that allows me to
write at all. And I've left a lot of things unsaid, that I ought to
have said, and intended to say, but this will have to be enough. If
there's nothing that speaks up to you, from between these lines, then
there's nothing that can hold together, I'm afraid, what's left of your
life and mine. Think this over, Dinky-Dunk, and answer the way your
heart dictates. But please don't keep me waiting too long, for until I
get that answer I'll be like a hen on a hot griddle or Mary Queen of
Scots on the morning before she lost her head, if that's more
dignified."

The hardest part of all that letter, I found, was the ending of it. It
took me a long time to decide just what to sign myself, just how to
pilot my pen between the rocks of candor and dignity. So I ended up by
signing it "Chaddie" and nothing more, for already the fires of
emotion had cooled and a perplexed little reaction of indifferency had
set in. It was only a surface-stir, but it was those surface-stirs, I
remembered, which played such a lamentably important part in life.

When Whinstane Sandy came in at noon for his dinner, a full quarter of
an hour ahead of Peter, I had his meal all ready for him by the time
he had watered and fed his team. I cut that meal short, in fact, by
handing him my carefully sealed letter and telling him I wanted him to
take it straight over to Casa Grande.

I knew by his face as I helped him hitch Water-Light to the
buckboard--for Whinnie's foot makes it hard for him to ride
horseback--that he nursed a pretty respectable inkling of the
situation. He offered no comments, and he even seemed averse to having
his ey