them in some ways, but there are many
others in which it hardens them. It draws their power of love together
into a fixed point, just as the lens of a burning-glass concentrates
the vague warmth of the sun into one small and fiercely illuminated
area. It is a form of selfishness, I suppose, but it is a selfishness
nature imposes upon us. And it is sanctified by the end it serves. At
every turn, now, I find that I am thinking of my children. I seem to
have my eyes set steadily on something far, far ahead. I'm not quite
certain just what this something is. It's a sort of secret between me
and the Master of Life. But the memory of it makes my days more
endurable. It allows me to face the future without a quaver of regret.
I am a woman, and I am no longer young. But it gives me courage to
laugh in the teeth of Time.

And to laugh, to laugh whatever happens--that is the great thing! It
isn't age I dread. But I'd hate to lose that lightness with which
those blessed ones we call the young can move through the world, that
self-renewing freshness which converts every daybreak into a dewy new
world and mints every sunrise into a brand new life ... I asked
Gershom to-day if he could possibly tell me how many Parker House
rolls a square mile of wheat running forty bushels to the acre would
make. And he surprised me by inquiring how many quarts of buttermilk
it would take to shingle a cow. Gershom is widening out a bit....

Dinkie, I notice, has just compiled a list of horses. I read from his
carefully ruled half-page:

"Draght horses; carriege horses; riding horses; racing horses;
ponyies; percheron from france; Belgain from Beljium; shire clyesdale
and saffold punch from great Britain; french coach and German coach;
contucky saddle horses; through-breads; Shetland ponies; mushstand
ponies; pacers and pintoes." Thus recordeth my Toddler.

_Sunday the Ninth_

I have had Dinkie in bed for the last five days, with a bruised foot.
Duncan shortened the stirrups and put the boy on Briquette, who had
just proved a handful for even an old horse-wrangler like Cuba Sebeck.
Briquette bucked and threw the boy. And Dinkie, in the mix-up, got a
hoof-pound on the ankle. No bones were broken, luckily, but the foot
was very sore and swollen for a few days. No word about the episode
has passed between Duncan and me. But I'm glad, all things considered,
that I was not a witness of the accident. The clouds are already quite
heavy enough