Calgary."

"Won't it be wonderful," said Lossie as I sat pondering over those
foolish little lines, "won't it be wonderful, if Dinkie grows up to be
a great poet?"

_Monday the Eleventh_

Elmer, _alias_ Dinkie, after many days' mourning for his lost Scotty,
is consoling himself, as other men do, with a substitute. Last Friday
he Brought home a flop-eared pup with a drooping tail and an
indefinite ancestry, explaining that he had come into possession of
the aforementioned animal by the duly delivered purchase-price of
thirty-seven cents.

Remembering Minty and certain matters of the past, I was troubled in
spirit. But I couldn't see why my son shouldn't have an animal to
love. And I have had Hilton fix a little box in one corner of the
garage for Dinkie's new pet, which he has christened Rowdy.

Rowdy, I now see, is a canine of limited spirit and is not likely to
repeat the offenses of Minty. But Dinkie really loves his new pup,
despite the latter's indubitably democratic ancestry. And I begin to
suspect that my laddie's weakness for mongrels may arise from his
earlier experience with Duncan's blooded bulldog, which he struggled
with for three whole days, fondly and foolishly trying to teach that
stolid animal the art of "pointing."

On Saturday Dinkie smuggled the verminous Rowdy to the upper
bathroom and gave him a thorough but quite unrelished soaping ...
Dinkie, by the way, is now a "cub" in the Boy Scouts and after
adorning himself in khaki goes off on hikes and takes lessons in
woodcraft. Saturday the Scouts of his school marched behind a real
band and Lossie and I sat in the car waiting for my laddie to appear.
He wiggled one hand, and smiled sheepishly, as he caught sight of us.
But he kept "eyes front" and refused to give any further sign as he
marched bravely on behind that brave music. He is learning the law
of the pack. For some first frail ideas of service are beginning
to incubate in that egoistic little bean of his. And he's suffering,
I suppose, the old contest between the ancestral lust to kill and
the new-born inclination to succor and preserve. That means he may
some day be "a gentleman." And I've a weakness for that old Newman
definition of a gentleman as one who never inflicts pain--"tender
towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful
towards the absurd"--conducting himself toward his enemy as if he
were some day to be his friend. And I also wish there were a few
mo