Wednesday the Eighth

Dinkie, who has been disturbing me the last few days by going about with an air of suppressed excitement, brought my anxiety to a head yesterday by staring into my face and then saying:

“Mummy, I’ve got a secret!”

“What secret?” I asked, doing my best to appear indifferent.

But Dinkie was not to be trapped.

“It wouldn’t be a secret, if I told you,” he sagaciously explained.

I studied my child with what was supposed to be a reproving eye.

“You mean you can’t even tell your own Mummy?” I demanded.

He shook his head, in solemn negation.

“But can you, some day?” I pursued.

He thought this over.

“Yes, some day,” he acknowledged, squeezing my knee.

“How long will I have to wait?” I asked, wondering what could bring such a rhapsodic light into his hazel-specked eye. I thought, of course, of Doreen O’Lone. And I wished the O’Lones would follow in the footsteps of so many other successful ranchers and trek off to California. Then, as I sat studying Dinkie, I countermanded that wish. For its fulfillment would bring loneliness to the heart of my laddie—and loneliness is hell! So, instead, I struggled as best I could to banish all thought of the matter from my mind. But it was only half a success. I remembered that Gershom himself had been going about as abstracted as an ant-eater and as gloomy as a crow, during the last week; and I kept sniffing something unpropitious up-wind. I even hoped that Dinkie would return to the subject, as children with a secret have the habit of doing. But he has been as tight-lipped on the matter as his reticent old dad might have been.