and I can see, now, what an awful
Ananias Peter really is. Struthers, by the way, observed me in the
midst of that inspection, and, if I'm not greatly mistaken, indulged
in a sniff. To her, I suppose, I'm one of those vain creatures who
fall in love with themselves as a child and perpetuate, thereby, a
life romance!

_Saturday the Twenty-sixth_

Coming events do _not_ cast their shadows before them. I was busy in
the kitchen this morning, making marmalade out of what was left of
Peter's oranges and contentedly humming _Oh, Dry Those Tears_ when the
earthquake that shook the world from under my feet occurred.

The Twins had been bathed and powdered and fed and put out in their
sleeping-box, and Dinkie was having his morning nap, and Struthers was
busy at the sewing-machine, finishing up the little summer shirts for
Poppsy and Pee-Wee which I'd begun to make out of their daddy's
discarded B. V. D.'s. It was a glorious morning with a high-arching
pale blue sky and little baby-lamb cloudlets along the sky-line and
the milk of life running warm and rich in the bosom of the sleeping
earth. And I was bustling about in my apron of butcher's linen, after
slicing oranges on my little maple-wood carving-slab until the house
was aromatic with them, when the sound of a racing car-engine smote on
my ear. I went to the door with fire in my eye and the long-handled
preserving spoon in my hand, ready to call down destruction on the
pinhead who'd dare to wake my kiddies.

My visitor, I saw, was Lady Alicia; and I beheld my broken wash-tub
under the front axle of her motor-car.

I went out to her, with indignation still in my eye, but she paid no
attention to either that or the tub itself. She was quite pale, in
fact, as she stepped down from her driving-seat, glanced at her
buckskin gauntlets, and then looked up at me.

"There's something we may as well face, and face at once," she said,
with less of a drawl than usual.

I waited, without speaking, wondering if she was referring to the tub.
But I could feel my heart contract, like a leg-muscle with a cramp in
it. And we stood there, face to face, under the flat prairie sunlight,
ridiculously like two cockerels silently estimating each other's
intentions.

"I'm in love with your husband," Lady Alicia suddenly announced, with
a bell-like note of challenge in her voice. "And I'd rather like to
know what you're going to do about it."

I was able to la