I had to stay in that smelly old hole of a hospital and in that bald little prairie city fully a week longer than I wanted to. I tried to rebel against being bullied, even though the hand of iron was padded with velvet. But the powers that be were too used to handling perverse and fretful women. They thwarted my purpose and broke my will and kept me in bed until I began to think I’d take root there.

But once I and my bairns were back here at Casa Grande I could see that they were right. In the first place the trip was tiring, too tiring to rehearse in detail. Then a vague feeling of neglect and desolation took possession of me, for I missed the cool-handed efficiency of that ever-dependable “special.” I almost surrendered to funk, in fact, when both Poppsy and Pee-Wee started up a steady duet of crying. I sat down and began to sniffle myself, but my sense of humor, thank the Lord, came back and saved the day. There was something so utterly ridiculous in that briny circle, soon augmented and completed by the addition of Dinkie, who apparently felt as lonely and overlooked as did his spineless and sniffling mother.

So I had to tighten the girths of my soul. I took a fresh grip on myself and said: “Look here, Tabbie, this is never going to do. This is not the way Horatius held the bridge. This is not the spirit that built Rome. So, up, Guards, and at ’em! Excelsior! Audaces fortuna juvat!”

So I mopped my eyes, and readjusted the Twins, and did what I could to placate Dinkie, who continues to regard his little brother and sister with a somewhat hostile eye. One of my most depressing discoveries on getting back home, in fact, was to find that Dinkie has grown away from me in my absence. At first he even resented my approaches, and he still stares at me, now and then, across a gulf of perplexity. But the ice is melting. He’s beginning to understand, after all, that I’m his really truly mother and that he can come to me with his troubles. He’s lost a good deal of his color, and I’m beginning to suspect that his food hasn’t been properly looked after during the last few weeks. It’s a patent fact, at any rate, that my house hasn’t been properly looked after. Iroquois Annie, that sullen-eyed breed servant of ours, will never have any medals pinned on her pinny for neatness. I’d love to ship her, but heaven only knows where we’d find any one to take her place. And I simply must have help, during the next few months.

Casa Grande, by the way, looked such a little dot on the wilderness, as we drove back to it, that a spear of terror pushed its way through my breast as I realized that I had my babies to bring up away out here on the edge of this half-settled no-man’s land. If only our dreams had come true! If only the plans of mice and men didn’t go so aft agley! If only the railway had come through to link us up with civilization, and the once promised town had sprung up like a mushroom-bed about our still sad and solitary Casa Grande! But what’s the use of repining, Tabbie McKail? You’ve the second-best house within thirty miles of Buckhorn, with glass door-knobs and a laundry-chute, and a brood to rear, and a hard-working husband to cook for. And as the kiddies get older, I imagine, I’ll not be troubled by this terrible feeling of loneliness which has been weighing like a plumb-bob on my heart for the last few days. I wish Dinky-Dunk didn’t have to be so much away from home....

Old Whinstane Sandy, our hired man, has presented me with a hand-made swing-box for Poppsy and Pee-Wee, a sort of suspended basket-bed that can be hung up in the porch as soon as my two little snoozers are able to sleep outdoors. Old Whinnie, by the way, was very funny when I showed him the Twins. He solemnly acknowledged that they were nae sae bad, conseederin’. I suppose he thought it would be treason to Dinkie to praise the newcomers who threatened to put little Dinkie’s nose out of joint. And Whinnie, I imagine, will always be loyal to Dinkie. He says little about it, but I know he loves that child. He loves him in very much the same way that Bobs, our collie dog, loves me. It was really Bobs’ welcome, I think, across the cold prairie air, that took the tragedy out of my homecoming. There were gladness and trust in those deep-throated howls of greetings. He even licked the snow off my overshoes and nested his head between my knees, with his bob-tail thumping the floor like a flicker’s beak. He sniffed at the Twins rather disgustedly. But he’ll learn to love them, I feel sure, as time goes on. He’s too intelligent a dog to do otherwise....

I’ll be glad when spring comes, and takes the razor-edge out of this northern air. We’ll have half a month of mud first, I suppose. But “there’s never anything without something,” as Mrs. Teetzel very sagely announced the other day. That sour-apple philosopher, by the way, is taking her departure to-morrow. And I’m not half so sorry as I pretend to be. She’s made me feel like an intruder in my own home. And she’s a soured and venomous old ignoramus, for she sneered openly at my bath-thermometer and defies Poppsy and Pee-Wee to survive the winter without a “comfort.” After I’d announced my intention of putting them outdoors to sleep, when they were four weeks old, she lugubriously acknowledged that there were more ways than one of murderin’ infant children. Her ideal along this line, I’ve discovered, is slow asphyxiation in a sort of Dutch-oven made of an eider-down comforter, with as much air as possible shut off from their uncomfortable little bodies. But the Oracle is going, and I intend to bring up my babies in my own way. For I know a little more about the game now than I did when little Dinkie made his appearance in this vale of tears. And whatever my babies may or may not be, they are at least healthy little tikes.