things up here even more interesting than your Edmonton
formation," he remarked. "But I was born a Quaker, you see, and I
can't get rid of my self-control!"

"I like you for that," I rather depressed him by saying. "For I find
that one accepts you, Peter, as one accepts a climate. You're intimate
in your very remoteness."

Peter looked at me out of a rueful yet ruminative eye. But Whinnie
came forth and grimly announced that the Twins were going it. So I had
to turn shackward.

"You really ought to get that car out," I called over my shoulder to
him, with a head-nod toward the hay-stack. And he nodded absently back
at me.

_Thursday the--I Can't Remember_

Dinky-Dunk rode over to-day when Peter was bolting some new wire stuts
on the windmill tower and I was busy dry-picking two polygamous old
roosters which Whinnie had beheaded for me. My husband attempted an
offhand and happy-go-lucky air which, I very soon saw, was merely a
mask to hide his embarrassment. He even flushed up to the ears when
little Dinkie drew back for a moment or two, as any child might who
didn't recognize his own father, though he later solicitously tiptoed
to the sleeping-porch where the Twins were having their nap, and
remarked that they were growing prodigiously.

It was all rather absurd. But when one member of this life-partnership
business is stiff with constraint, you can't expect the other member
to fall on his neck and weep. And Dinky-Dunk, for all his nonchalance,
looked worried and hollow-eyed. He was in the saddle again, and headed
back for Casa Grande, when he caught sight of Peter at work on the
windmill. So he loped over to my hired man and had a talk with him.
What they talked about I couldn't tell, of course, but it seemed a
casual and friendly enough conversation. Peter, in his blue-jeans,
dirt-marked and oil-stained, and with a wrench in his hand, looked
like an I. W. W. agitator who'd fallen on evil days.

I felt tempted to sally forth and reprove Dinky-Dunk for wasting the
time of my hired help. But that, I remembered in time, might be
treading on rather thin ice, or, what would be even worse, might seem
like snooping. And speaking of snooping, reminds me that a few nights
ago I listened carefully at the open window of the bunk-house where
Whinstane Sandy was deep in repose. Not a sound, not a trace of a
snore, arose from Whinnie's cot.

So my suspicions were confirmed. That old sourdough ha