he royal
blood would care to lie in. _Olie had made it_. He had worked on it
during his spare hours in the evening, and even Dinky-Dunk hadn't known.
I made Olga hold it up at the foot of the bed so I could see it better.
It had been scroll-sawed and sand-papered and polished like any
factory-made baby-bed, and my faithful old Olie had even attempted some
hand-carving along the rockers and the head-board. But as I looked at it
I realized that it must have taken weeks and weeks to make. And that
gave me an odd little earthquaky feeling in the neighborhood of the
midriff, for I knew then that my secret had been no secret at all.
Dinky-Dunk, by the way, has just announced that we're to have a
touring-car. He says I've earned it!

_Tuesday the Eleventh_

Yesterday was so warm that I sat out in the sun and took an ozone-bath.
I sat there, staring down at my boy, realizing that I was a mother. My
boy--bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! It's so hard to believe! And
now I am one of the mystic chain, and no longer the idle link. I am a
mother. And I'd give an arm if you and Chinkie and Scheming-Jack could
see my boy, at this moment. He's like a rose-leaf and he's got six
dimples, not counting his hands and feet--for I've found and kissed 'em
all--on different parts of his blessed little body. Dinky-Dunk came back
from Buckhorn yesterday with a lot of the foolishest things you ever
clapped eyes on--a big cloth elephant that grunts when you pull its
tail, a musical spinning-top, a high-chair, and a projecting lantern.
They're for Dinky-Dink, of course. But it will be a week or two before
he can manipulate the lantern!

_Wednesday the Thirteenth_

Dinky-Dunk has taken Mrs. Dixon home and come back with a brand-new
"hand," which, of course, is prairie-land synecdoche for a new hired
man. His name is Terry Dillon, and as the name might lead you to
imagine, he's about as Irish as Paddy's pig. He is blessed with a
potato-lip, a buttermilk brogue, and a nose which, if he follows it
faithfully, will some day lead him straight to Heaven. But Terry,
Dinky-Dunk tells me, is a steady worker and a good man with horses, and
that of course rounds him out as a paragon in the eyes of my
slave-driving lord and master. I asked where Terry came from.
Dinky-Dunk, with rather a grim smile, acknowledged that he'd been
working for Percy.

Terry, it seems, has no particular love for an Englishman. And Percy had
affronted his ha