Dinky-Dunk has taken Mrs. Dixon home and come back with a brand-new "hand," which, of course, is prairie-land synecdoche for a new hired man. His name is Terry Dillon, and as the name might lead you to imagine, he's about as Irish as Paddy's pig. He is blessed with a potato-lip, a buttermilk brogue, and a nose which, if he follows it faithfully, will some day lead him straight to Heaven. But Terry, Dinky-Dunk tells me, is a steady worker and a good man with horses, and that of course rounds him out as a paragon in the eyes of my slave-driving lord and master. I asked where Terry came from. Dinky-Dunk, with rather a grim smile, acknowledged that he'd been working for Percy.
Terry, it seems, has no particular love for an Englishman. And Percy had affronted his haughty Irish spirit with certain ideas of caste which can't be imported into the Canadian West, where the hired man is every whit as good as his master--as that master will tragically soon find out if he tries to make his help eat at second table! At any rate, Percy and potato-lipped Terry developed friction which ended up in every promise of a fight, only Dinky-Dunk arrived in the nick of time and took Terry off his harassed neighbor's hands. I told him he had rather the habit of catching people on the bounce. But I am reserving my opinion of Terry Dillon. We are a happy family here, and I want no trouble-makers in my neighborhood.
I have been studying some of the New York magazines, going rather hungrily through their advertisements where such lovely layettes are described. My poor little Dinky-Dink's things are so plain and rough and meager. I envy those city mothers with all those beautiful linens and laces. But my little Spartan man-child has never known a single day's sickness. And some day he'll show 'em!
