ad once loved; but you can't feed a hungry
heart by staring at a pair of glass eyes and a wired tail without any
wag in it.

_Saturday the Ninth_

Struthers and I have been busy making clothes, during the absence of
Dinky-Dunk, who has been off duck-shooting for the last three days. He
complained of being a bit tuckered out and having stood the gaff too
long and needing a change. The outing will do him good. The children
miss him, of course, but he's promised to bring Dinkie home an Indian
bow-and-arrow. I can see death and destruction hanging over the
glassware of this household.... The weather has been stormy, and
yesterday Whinnie and Struthers put up the stove in the bunk-house.
They were a long time about it, but I was reluctant to stop the
flutterings of Cupid's wings.

_Tuesday the Twelfth_

I had a brief message from Peter stating the Pasadena house is
entirely at my disposal.... Dinky-Dunk came back with a real
pot-hunter's harvest of wild ducks, which we'll pick and dress and
freeze for winter use. I'm taking the breast-feathers for my pillows
and Whinstane Sandy is taking what's left for a sleeping-bag--from
which I am led to infer that he's still reconciled to a winter of
solitude. Struthers, I know, could tell him of a warmer bag than that,
lined with downier feathers from the pinions of Eros. But, as I've
said before, Fate, being blind, weaves badly.

_Friday the Fifteenth_

I've just told Dinky-Dunk of my decision to take the kiddies to
California for the winter months. He rather surprised me by agreeing
with everything I suggested. He feels, I think, as I do, that there's
danger in going aimlessly on and on as we have been doing. And it's
really a commonplace for the prairie rancher--when he can afford
it--to slip down to California for the winter. They go by the
thousand, by the train-load.

_Friday the Sixth_

It's three long weeks since I've had time for either ink or retrospect.
But at last I'm settled, though I feel as though I'd died and ascended
into Heaven, or at least changed my world, as the Chinks say, so
different is Pasadena to the prairie and Alabama Ranch. For as I sit
here on the _loggia_ of Peter's house I'm bathed in a soft breeze that
is heavy with a fragrance of flowers, the air is the air of our
balmiest midsummer, and in a pepper-tree not thirt