erful Tokudo overlooks. And Tokudo _is_ a
wonder. That cat-footed little Jap does the ordering and cooking and
serving; he answers the door and the telephone; he attends to the rugs
and the hardwood floors; he rules over the butler's pantry and
polishes the silver and inspects the linen, and even keeps the keys to
Duncan's carefully guarded wine-cellar, which the mistress of the
house herself has not yet dared to invade.

My husband seems to be very busy with his coal-mines and his other
interests. He said last night that his idea of happiness is to be so
immersed in his work as to be unconscious of time and undisturbed by
its passing. And he _has_ been happy, in that way. But Time, that
patient remodeler of all things mortal, can still work while we sleep.
And something has been happening, without Duncan quite knowing it. He
has changed. He is older, for one thing. I don't mean that my husband
is an old man. But I can see a number of early-autumnal alterations in
him. He's a trifle heavier and stiffer. He's lost a bit of his
springiness. And he seems to know it, in his secret heart of hearts,
for he tries to make up for that loss with a sort of coerced
blitheness which doesn't always carry. He affects a sort of creaking
jauntiness which sometimes falls short of its aim. When he can't
clear the hurdle, I notice, he has the habit of whipping up his tired
spirits with a cocktail or a highball or a silver-fizz. But he is
preoccupied, at times. And at other times he is disturbingly
short-tempered. He announced this morning, almost gruffly, that we'd
had about enough of this "Dinkie and Poppsy business," and the
children might as well be called by their real names. So I shall make
another effort to get back to "Elmer" and "Pauline Augusta." But I
feel, in my bones, that those pompous appellatives will not be always
remembered. It has just occurred to me that my old habit of calling my
husband "Dinky-Dunk" has slipped away from me. Endearing diminutives,
I suppose, are not elicited by polar bears.

_Thursday the Thirty-First_

I don't quite know what's the matter with me. I'm like a cat in a
strange garret. I don't seem to be fitting in. I sat at the piano last
night playing "What's this dull town to me, Robin Adair?" And Duncan,
with the fit and natural spirit of the home-booster, actively resented
that oblique disparagement of his new business-center. He believes
implicitly in Calgary and its future.

As for my