really enduring that is not built on loyalty and
truth. Character is Fate, as I once before inscribed in this book of
my life. And I've been sitting up to-night, while the eternal bridge
game is going on below, asking myself if all is well with Chaddie
McKail. Have I, or have I not, conceded too much? Am I turning into
nothing more than a mush of concession? Haven't I been bribed by
comfort, and blinded to a situation which I am now almost afraid to
face? Haven't I been selfishly scheming for the welfare of my children
and endangering all their future and my own by the price I am paying?
Haven't I been crazily manning a rickety old pump, trying to keep
afloat a family hulk whose seams are wide open and whose timbers are
water-logged? And how long can this sort of thing go on? And what will
be the end of it?

I try to warn myself not to smash my goods to kill a rat, as the
Chinese say. I try to flatter myself that I am not letting
circumstances stampede me into any hasty decision. There's many a
woman, I suppose, with a husband whose legal promise has outlived his
loyalty. But all is not well here about my heart. I know that, by the
way it keeps sending up little trial-balloons, to see which way the
wind is really blowing.

... And Sunday night Cattalo Charlie went home quite drunk. And our
local member, emboldened by his seventh highball, offhandedly invited
me to accompany him on a little run up to Banff, stabbing me with a
hurt look when I told him I'd see when Duncan could get away from his
work....

I wonder if spring is coming to Casa Grande? And at Alabama Ranch? And
are the pussy-willows showing in the slough-ends? And why doesn't
Peter Ketley ever write to me?

_Saturday the Sixteenth_

Lossie and Gershom, I find, have drifted into the habit of writing to
each other. It is, of course, all purely platonic and pedagogic,
arising out of a common interest in my Dinkie's academic advancement.
But Lossie borrowed Dinkie this morning to have a photograph taken
with him, one copy of which she has very generously promised to send
on to Gershom.... Struthers has sent me a very satisfactory report
from Casa Grande, which I dreamed last night had burned to the ground,
compelling me and my kiddies to live in the old prairie-schooner,
laboriously pulled about the prairie by Tithonus and Calamity Kate.
And when I applied at Peter's door for a handful of meal for my
starving children, he called me worse than a fa