It’s difficult to be a woman, as the over-sensitive Jean Christophe once remarked. Men are without those confounding emotions which women seem to be both cursed with and blessed with. When I announced to Dinky-Dunk my willingness to part with Alabama Ranch, he took it quite as a matter of course. He betrayed no tendency to praise me for my sacrifices, for my willingness to surrender to strangers the land which had once been our home, the acres on which we’d once been happy and heavy-hearted. He merely remarked that under the circumstances it seemed the most sensible thing to do. There’s a one-horse lawyer in Buckhorn who has been asking about the Harris Ranch and Dinky-Dunk says he suspects this inquiring one has a client up his sleeve.

What I had looked forward to as a talk which might possibly beat down a few of the barriers of reserve between us proved a bit of a disappointment. My husband refused to accept me as a heroine. And 136 on his way out, as ill-luck would have it, he stopped to observe Pauline Augusta struggling over a letter to her “Uncle Peter.” It was a maiden effort along that line and she was dictating her messages to Dinkie, who, in turn, was laboriously and carefully inscribing them on my writing-pad, with a nose and a sympathetically working tongue not more than ten inches away from the paper. Pauline Augusta, in fact, had just proclaimed to her amanuensis that “we had a geese for dinner to-day” when her father stopped to size up the situation.

“To whom are you describing the home circle?” questioned Pauline Augusta’s parent, with an intonation that didn’t escape me.

“It’s a letter to Uncle Peter,” explained Dinkie’s little sister. And I could see Duncan’s face harden.

“It’s funny my whole family should fall for that damned Quaker!” were the words he flung over his shoulder at me as he walked out of the room.