She made a stubborn effort to
exhaust the possibilities of all the little hemmers, and tried the
shirrer and the fire-stitch ruffler, and obviously had a fling at the
binder and a turn at the tucker. What she did to the tension-spring
heaven only knows. And my brand-new machine is on the blink. And my
meek-eyed little Poppsy isn't as impeccable as the world about her
imagined!

_Wednesday the Third_

Susie Mumford arrived yesterday. The weather, heaven be thanked, was
perfect, an opal day with the earth as fresh-smelling as Poppsy just
out of her bath. There was just enough chill in the air to make one's
blood tingle and just enough warmth in the sunlight to make it feel
like a benediction. Whinstane Sandy, in fact, avers that we're in for
a spell of Indian Summer.

I motored in to Buckhorn and met Susie, who wasn't in the least what I
expected. I was looking for a high-spirited and insolent-eyed young
lady who'd probably be traveling with a French maid and a van-load of
trunks, after the manner of Lady Alicia. But the Susie I met was a
tired and listless and rather white-faced girl who reminds me just
enough of her Uncle Peter to make me like her. The poor child knows
next to nothing of the continent on which she was born, and the
immensity of our West has rather appalled her. She told me, driving
home, that she had never before been this side of the Adirondacks.
Yet she has crossed the Atlantic eight times and knows western Europe
about as well as she knows Long Island itself. There is a
matter-of-factness about Susie which makes her easy to get along with.
Poppsy took to her at once and was a garrulous and happy witness of
Susie's unpacking. Dinkie, on the other hand, developed an altogether
unlooked-for shyness and turned red when Susie kissed him. There was
no melting of the ice until the strange lady produced a very wonderful
toy air-ship, which you wind up and which soars right over the
haystacks, if you start it right. This was a present which Peter sent
out. Dinkie, in fact, spent most of his spare time last night writing
a letter to his Uncle Peter, a letter which he intimated he had no
wish for the rest of the family to read. He was willing to
acknowledge, this morning, that since he and Susie both had the same
Uncle Peter, they really ought to be cousins....

Susie has not been sleeping well, and for all her weariness last night
had to take five grains of veronal before she could settle down. Th