Part 28

"In the face of all these?" I said with a contented little laugh, nodding toward my three children.

"In the face of everything," asserted Peter.

"Then I wish you'd do something for me," I told him.

"What?"

"Break that woman's heart," I announced, with a backward nod of my head toward Casa Grande.

"I'd much rather break yours," he coolly contended. "Or I'd prefer knowing I had the power of doing it."

I shook my head. "It can't be done, Peter. And it can't even be pretended. Imagine the mother of twins trying to flirt with a man even as nice as you are! It would be as bad as an elephant trying to be kittenish and about as absurd as one of your dinosauria getting up and trying to do a two-step. And I'm getting old and prosy, Peter, and if I pretend to be skittish now and then it's only to mask the fact that I'm on the shelf, that I've eaten my pie and that before long I'll be dyeing my hair every other Sunday, the same as Struthers, and----"

"Rot!" interrupted Peter. "All rot!"

"Why rot?" I demanded.

"Because to me you're the embodiment of undying youth," asserted the troubadour beside me. It was untrue, and it was improper, but for a moment or two at least my hungry heart closed about that speech the same as a child's hand closes about a chocolate-drop. Women are made that way. But I had to keep to the trail.

"Supposing we get back to earth," I suggested.

"What's the matter with the way we were heading?" countered the quiet-eyed Peter.

"It doesn't seem quite right," I argued. And he laughed a little wistfully.

"What difference does it make, so long as we're happy?" he inquired. And I tried to reprove him with a look, but I don't think it quite carried in the misty starlight.

"I can't say," I told him, "that I approve of your reasoning."

"That's just the point," he said with a slightly more reckless note in his laughter. "It doesn't pretend to be reasoning. It's more like that abandoning of all reasoning which brings us our few earthly glories."

"Cogito, ergo sum," I announced, remembering my Descartes.

"Well, I'm going to keep on just the same," protested Peter.

"Keep on at what?" I asked.

"At thinking you're adorable," was his reply.

"Well, the caterpillars have been known to stop the train, but you must remember that it's rather hard on the caterpillars," I proclaimed as we swung off the trail and headed in for Alabama Ranch.

Sunday the Thirteenth

On Friday night there were heavy showers again, and now Whinnie reports that our Marquis wheat couldn't look better and ought to run well over forty bushels to the acre. We are assured of sufficient moisture, but our two enemies yclept Fire and Hail remain. I should like to have taken out hail insurance, but I haven't the money on hand.

I can at least make sure of my fire-guards. Turning those essential furrows will be good training for Peter. That individual, by the way, has been quieter and more ruminative of late, and, if I'm not mistaken, a little gentler in his attitude toward me. Yet there's not a trace of pose about him, and I feel sure he wouldn't harm the morals of a lady-bug. He's kind and considerate, and doing his best to be a good pal. Whinnie, by the way, regards me with a mildly reproving eye, and having apparently concluded that I am a renegade, is concentrating his affection on Dinkie, for whom he is whittling out a new Noah's Ark in his spare time. He is also teaching Dinkie to ride horseback, lifting him up to the back of either Nip or Tuck when they come for water and letting him ride as far as the stable. He looks very small up on that big animal.

At night, now that the evenings are so long, Whinnie takes my laddie on his knee and tells him stories, stories which he can't possibly understand, I'm sure, but Dinkie likes the drone of Whinnie's voice and the feel of those rough old arms about his little body. We all hunger for affection. The idiot who said that love was the bitters in the cocktail of life wasn't either a good liver or a good philosopher. For love is really the whole cocktail. Take that away, and nothing is left....

I seem to be getting moodier, as summer advances. Alternating waves of sourness and tenderness sweep through me, and if I wasn't a busy woman I'd possibly make a fine patient for one of those fashionable nerve-specialists who don't flourish on the prairie.

But I can't quite succeed in making myself as miserable as I feel I ought to be. There seems to be a great deal happening all about us, and yet nothing ever happens. My children are hale and hearty, my ranch is fat with its promise of harvest, and I am surrounded by people who love and respect me. But it doesn't seem enough. Coiled in my heart is one small disturbing viper which I can neither scotch nor kill. Yet I decline to be the victim of anything as ugly as jealousy. For jealousy is both poisonous and pathetic. But I'd like to choke that woman!

Yesterday Lady Alicia, who is now driving her own car, picked up Peter from his fire-guard work and carried him off on an experimental ride to see what was wrong with her carbureter--the same old carbureter! She let him out at the shack, on her way home, and Struthers witnessed the tail end of that enlèvement. It spoilt her day for her. She fumed and fretted and made things fly--for Struthers always works hardest, I've noticed, when in a temper--and surrendering to the corroding tides which were turning her gentle nature into gall and wormwood, obliquely and tremulously warned the somewhat startled Peter against ungodly and frivolous females who 'ave no right to be corrupting simple-minded colonials and who 'ave no scruples against playing with men the same as a cat would play with a mouse.