Dinky-Dunk is back, and very busy again. During the day I scarcely get a glimpse of him, except at meal-times. I have a steadily growing sense of being neglected, but I know how a worried man hates petulance. The really important thing is that Percy is giving Olga lessons in reading and writing. For, although a Finn, she is a Canadian Finn from almost the shadow of the sub-Arctics, and has had little chance for education. But her mind is not obtuse.
Yesterday I asked Olga what she thought of Percival Benson. "Ah lak heem," she calmly admitted in her majestic, monosyllabic way. "He is a fonny leetle man." And the "fonny leetle man" who isn't really little, seems to like Olga, odd as it may sound. They are such opposites, such contradictions! Percy says she's Homeric. He says he never saw eyes that were so limpid, or such pools of peace and calm. He insists on the fact that she's essentially maternal, as maternal as the soil over which she walks, as Percy put it. I told him what Dinky-Dunk had once told me, about Olga killing a bull. The bull was a vicious brute that had attacked her father and knocked him down. He was striking at the fallen man with his fore-paws when Olga heard his cries. She promptly came for that bull with a pitchfork. And speaking of Homer, it must have been a pretty epical battle, for she killed the bull and left the fork-tines eight inches in his body while she picked up her father and carried him back to the house. And I won't even kill my own hens, but have always appointed Olie as the executioner.
