One can get out of the habit, apparently, of having children about. My kiddies, I begin to see, occasionally grate on Duncan. He brought tears to the eyes of Pauline Augusta yesterday by the way he scolded her for using a lead-pencil on the living-room woodwork. And the night before he shouted much strong language at Elmer for breaking a window-pane in the garage with Benny McArthur’s new air-gun.

Elmer and his father, I’m afraid, have rather grown away from each other. More than once I’ve caught Duncan staring at his son and heir in a puzzled and a slightly frustrated sort of way. And Elmer’s soul promptly becomes incommunicado when his iron-browed pater is in the neighborhood.

Duncan is very proud of his grand new house. He is anxious to build a conservatory out along the southwest wing. But he has asked how long a conservatory would last with two young mountain-goats gamboling along its leads.... Lossie, little suspecting 317 the pang she was giving me, laughingly showed me a manuscript which she found by accident in my Dinkie’s reader. It was a poem, dedicated to “D. O’L.” And written in a stiff little hand I read:

“Won’t it be wonderful,” said Lossie as I sat pondering over those foolish little lines, “won’t it be wonderful, if Dinkie grows up to be a great poet?”