e of thought. I had no time for
reading, and what was even worse, I had no desire for reading, but
plodded on, like the stunned ox, kindred to the range animals and
sister to the cow.

Then, as I sat luxuriating before my crowded banquet-table of misery,
as I sat mopping my nose--which was getting most unmistakably rough
with prairie-winds and alkali-water--and thinking what a fine mess I'd
made of a promising young life, I fancied I heard an altogether too
familiar C-sharp cry. So I got wearily up and went tiptoeing in to see
if either Poppsy or Pee-Wee were awake.

But they were there, safe and sound and fast asleep, curled up like two
plump little kittens, with their long lashes on their cheeks of
peach-blow pink and their dewy little lips slightly parted and four
little dimples in the back of each of the four little hands. And as I
stood looking down at them, with a shake still under my breastbone, I
couldn't keep from saying: "God bless your sleepy old bones!" Something
melted and fell from the dripping eaves of my heart, and I felt that it
was a sacred and God-given and joyous life, this life of being a
mother, and any old maid who wants to pirouette around the Plaza roof
with a lounge-lizard breathing winy breaths into her false hair was
welcome to her choice. I was at least in the battle of life--and life
is a battle which scars you more when you try to keep out of it than
when you wade into it. I was a mother and a home-maker and the hope and
buttress of the future. And all I wanted was a good night's sleep and
some candid friend to tell me not to be a feather-headed idiot, but a
sensible woman with a sensible perspective on things!

_Friday the Twenty-seventh--Or Should It Be the Twenty-eighth_

It has turned quite cold again, with frosts sharp enough at night to
freeze a half-inch of ice on the tub of soft-water I've been so
carefully saving for future shampoos. It's just as well I didn't try to
rush the season by getting too much of my truck-garden planted. We're
glad of a good fire in the shack-stove after sun-down. I've rented
thirty acres from the Land Association that owns the half-section next
to mine and am going to get them into oats. If they don't ripen up
before the autumn frosts come and blight them, I can still use the
stuff for green feed. And I've bargained for the hay-rights from the
upper end of the section, but heaven only knows how I'll ever get it
cut and stacked.

Whinnie