Lady Allie is either dunderheaded or designing. She has calmly suggested that her rural phone-line be extended from Casa Grande to Alabama Ranch so that she can get in touch with Dinky-Dunk when she needs his help and guidance. Even as it is, he’s called on about five times a week, to run to the help of that she-remittance-man in corduroy and dog-skin gauntlets and leggings.

She seems thunderstruck to find that she can’t get the hired help she wants, at a moment’s notice. Dinky-Dunk says she’s sure to be imposed on, and that although she’s as green as grass, she’s really anxious to learn. He feels that it’s his duty to stand between her and the outsiders who’d be only too ready to impose on her ignorance.

She rode over to see the Twins yesterday, who were sleeping out under the fly-netting I’d draped over them, the pink-tinted kind they put over fruit-baskets in the city markets and shops. Poppsy and Pee-Wee looked exactly like two peaches, rosy and warm and round.

Lady Allie stared at them with rather an abstracted eye, and then, idiot that she is, announced that she’d like to have twelve. But talk is cheap. The modern woman who’s had even half that number has pretty well given up her life to her family. It’s remarkable, by the way, the silent and fathomless pity I’ve come to have for childless women. The thought of a fat spinster fussing over a French poodle or a faded blond forlornly mothering a Pekinese chow gives me a feeling that is at least first cousin to sea-sickness.

Lady Allie, I find, has very fixed and definite theories as to the rearing of children. They should never be rocked or patted, or be given a “comfort,” and they should be in bed for the night at sundown. There was a time I had a few theories of my own, but I’ve pretty well abandoned them. I’ve been taught, in this respect, to travel light, as the overland voyageurs of this country would express it, to travel light and leave the final resort to instinct.