The children have been away for a whole day, the first time in family history. And oh, what a difference it makes in this lonely little prairie home of ours! The quietness, the emptiness, the desolation of it all was something quite beyond my imagination. I know now that I could never live apart from them. Whatever happens, I shall not be separated from my kiddies....

I spent my idle time in getting Peter’s music-box in working order. Dinky-Dunk, who despises it, thoughtlessly sat on the package of records and broke three of them. I’ve been trying over the others. They sound tinny and flat, and I’m beginning to suspect I haven’t my sound-box adjusted right. I’ve a hunger to hear good music. And without quite knowing it, I’ve been craving for city life again, for at least a taste of it, for even a chocolate cream-soda at a Huyler counter. Dinky-Dunk yesterday said that I was a cloudy creature, and accused me of having a mutinous mouth. Men seem to think that love should be like an eight-day clock, with a moment or two of industrious winding-up rewarded by a long week of undeviating devotion.