“For one thing, because he is still a child, because he is too young,” I contended, knowing that I could 25 never agree with Dinky-Dunk in his thoroughly English ideas of education even while I remembered how he had once said that the greatness of England depended on her public-schools, such as Harrow and Eton and Rugby and Winchester, and that she had been the best colonizer in the world because her boys had been taken young and taught not to overvalue home ties, had been made manlier by getting off with their own kind instead of remaining hitched to an apron-string.
“And you prefer keeping him stuck out here on the prairie?” demanded Dinky-Dunk.
“The prairie has been good enough for his parents, this last seven or eight years,” I contended.
“It hasn’t been good enough for me,” my husband cried out with quite unlooked-for passion. “And I’ve about had my fill of it!”
“Where would you prefer going?” I asked, trying to speak as quietly as I could.
“That’s something I’m going to find out as soon as the chance comes,” he retorted with a slow and embittered emphasis which didn’t add any to my peace of mind.
“Then why cross our bridges,” I suggested, “until we come to them?” 26
“But you’re not looking for bridges,” he challenged. “You don’t want to see anything beyond living like Doukhobours out here on the edge of Nowhere and remembering that you’ve got your precious offspring here under your wing and wondering how many bushels of Number-One-Hard it will take to buy your Dinkie a riding pinto!”
“Aren’t you rather tired to-night?” I asked with all the patience I could command.
“Yes, and I’m talking about the thing that makes me tired. For you know as well as I do that you’ve made that boy of yours a sort of anesthetic. You put him on like a nose-cap, and forget the world. He’s about all you remember to think about. Why, when you look at the clock, nowadays, it isn’t ten minutes to twelve. It’s always Dinkie minutes to Dink. When you read a book you’re only reading about what your Dinkie might have done or what your Dinkie is some day to write. When you picture the Prime Minister it’s merely your Dinkie grown big, laying down the law to a House of Parliament made up of other Dinkies, rows and rows of ’em. When the sun shines you’re wondering whether it’s warm enough for your Dinkie to walk in, and when the snow begins to melt you’re wondering whether 27 it’s soft enough for the beloved Dinkie to mold into snowballs. When you see a girl you at once get busy speculating over whether or not she’ll ever be beautiful enough for your Dinkie, and when one of the Crowned Heads of Europe announces the alliance of its youngest princess you fall to pondering if Dinkie wouldn’t have made her a better husband. And when the flowers come out in your window-box you wonder if they’re fair enough to bloom beside your Dinkie. I don’t suppose I ever made a haystack that you didn’t wonder whether it wasn’t going to be a grand place for Dinkie to slide down. And when Dinkie draws a goggle-eyed man on his scribbler you see Michael Angelo totter and Titian turn in his grave. And when Dinkie writes a composition of thirty crooked lines on the landing of Hengist you feel that fate did Hume a mean trick in letting him pass away before inspecting that final word in historical record. And heaven’s just a row of Dinkies with little gold harps tucked under their wings. And you think you’re breathing air, but all you’re breathing is Dinkies, millions and millions of etherealized Dinkies. And when you read about the famine in China you inevitably and adroitly hitch the death of seven thousand Chinks in Yangchow on to the 28 interests of your immortal offspring. And I suppose Rome really came into being for the one ultimate end that an immortal young Dinkie might possess his full degree of Dinkiness and the glory that was Greece must have been merely the tom-toms tuning up for the finished dance of our Dinkie’s grandeur. Day and night, it’s Dinkie, just Dinkie!”