sy brings me a meal. There is a tremendous finality
about the way she sets down a tray. Daisy, in spite of her name, is
not so much a housemaid as what they used to call a stout serving
wench. She is courtly neither in figure nor manners. Her hair is
puffed out over her ears and drawn down low, till her head looks like
the husk of a hazel nut. But what odds? Daisy is splendidly plebeian
and really of more value to the community than a writing person who
falls downstairs. She cannot see for the life of her how I happened to
come out here, and so I am apologetic and find it necessary to explain.
She asks permission to try on my hat and tells me she has ordered a new
one from Edmonton. It is to have three "ostridge" feathers.

To assure me that the cat I stepped upon is not dead, she descends to
the kitchen and returns with it. The cat seems all right except that
it sags in the middle, but Daisy says this is because it has just been
fed. I am glad I did not kill it, in that I always associate a cat
with Diana Bubastis, the Egyptian goddess who presided over childbirth,
and who was represented with a feline head. Indeed, Bubastis is said
to have transformed herself into a cat when the gods fled from Egypt--a
play of gods and women and cats that has continued even to this very
day.

After dinner, I am able to go down to the sidewalk where I fribble away
the hours agreeably enough. It is a sun-shot afternoon, but the air is
cool to one's skin, and grateful after the scorching heat of yesterday.

Some civil engineers who came in on the train with me are playing
baseball on the road. These are no aesthetic feeblings, these merry
gentlemen, but a sturdy breed, upstanding and handsome, with skin like
the colour of well-seasoned saddles and a smell of burnt poplar in
their hair. I think the rough clothes they wear throw their good looks
into relief. Or it may be that the people _are_ better looking in the
North and have better physiques. It must be so, for the South has in
all ages drawn upon the northern blood for rejuvenation just as, in
these days, they need hard wheat to tone up their softer varieties.

I write of them as merry gentlemen because this fornight agone I had
been watching them make ducks and drakes of their savings. When they
come to Town, which they do once or twice a year, they cannot be
accused of nearness. Each mother's son holds to the amended maxim of
this country, "Hard come, easy go."