fter one of which
Susie, having removed her shoes and stockings, waded knee-deep in the
slough. She enjoys that sort of thing: it's something so entirely new
to the child of the city. And Susie, I might add, is already looking
much better. She is sleeping soundly, at last, and has promised me
there shall be no more night-caps of veronal. What is more, I am
getting to know her better--and I have several revisions to make.

In the first place, it is not the family divorce cloud that has been
darkening Susie's soul. She let the cat out of the bag, on the way
home this afternoon. Susie has been in love with a man who didn't come
up to expectations. She was very much in love, apparently, and
disregarded what people said about him. Then, much to her surprise,
her Uncle Peter took a hand in the game. It must have been rather a
violent hand, for a person so habitually placid. But Peter,
apparently, wasn't altogether ignorant of the club-talk about the
young rake in question. At any rate, he decided it was about time to
act. Susie declined to explain in just what way he acted. Yet she
admits now that Peter was entirely in the right and she, for a time,
was entirely in the wrong. But it is rather like having one's appendix
cut out, she protests, without an anesthetic. It takes time to heal
such wounds. Susie obviously was bowled over. She is still suffering
from shock. But I like the spirit of the girl. She's not the kind that
one disappointment is going to kill. And prairie life is already doing
her good. For she announced this morning that her clothes were
positively getting tight for her. And such clothes they are! Such
delicate silks and cobwebs of lace and pale-pink contraptions of
satin! Such neatly tailored skirts and short-vamped shoes and
thing-a-ma-jigs of Irish linen and platinum and gold trinkets to deck
out her contemptuous little body with. For Susie takes them all with a
shrug of indifference. She loves to slip on my oil-stained old
hunting-jacket and my weather-beaten old golf-boots and go meandering
about the range.

Another revision which I am compelled to make is that while I expected
to be the means of cheering Susie up, Susie has quite unconsciously
been the means of rejuvenating _me_. I think I've been able to catch
at least a hollow echo of her youth from her. I _know_ I have. Two
days ago, when we motored in to Buckhorn with my precious marketing of
butter and eggs--and Susie never before quite realized