_

I've been wondering to-day just what I'd do if I had to earn my own
living. I could run a ranch, I suppose, if I still had one, but two or
three years of such work would see me a hatchet-faced old termagant
with fallen arches and a prairie-squint. Or I could raise chickens and
peddle dated eggs in a flivver-and fresco hen-coops with whitewash
until the trap-nest of time swallowed me up in oblivion. Or I could
take a rural school somewhere and teach the three R's to little
Slovenes and Frisians and French-Canadians even more urgently in need
of soap and water. Or perhaps I could be housekeeper for one of our
new beef-kings in his new Queen-Anne Norman-Georgian Venetian palace
of Alberta sandstone with tesselated towers and bungalow
sleeping-porches. Or I might even peddle magazines, or start a little
bakery in one of the little board-fronted shops of Buckhorn, or take
in plain sewing and dispose of home-made preserves to the elite of the
community.

But each and all of them would be mere gestures of defeat. I'm of no
value to the world. There was a time when I regarded myself as quite a
Somebody, and prided myself on having an idea or two. Didn't Percy
even once denominate me as "a window-dresser"? There was a time when I
didn't have to wait to see if the pearl-handled knife was the one
intended for the fish-course, and I could walk across a waxed floor
without breaking my neck and do a bit of shopping in the Rue de la
Paix without being taken for a tourist. But that was a long, long time
ago. And life during the last few years has both humbled me and taught
me my limitations. I'm a house-wife, now, and nothing more--and not
even a successful house-wife. I've let everything fall away except the
thought of my home and my family. And now I find that the basket into
which I so carefully packed all my eggs hasn't even a bottom to it.

But I've no intention of repining. Heaven knows I've never wanted to
sit on the Mourner's Bench. I've never tried to pull a sour mug, as
Dinky-Dunk once inelegantly expressed it. I love life and the joy of
life, and I want all of it I can get. I believe in laughter, and I've
a weakness for men and women who can sing as they work. But I've
blundered into a black frost, and even though there was something to
sing about, there's scarcely a blue-bird left to do the singing. But
sometime, somewhere, there'll be an end to that silence. The blight
will pass, and I'll break out again. I know it