“Then don’t at least get distemper,” observed my Kaikobad, very quietly, over the top of his tractor-catalogue.
I made no sign that I had heard him. But Dinky-Dunk would never have spoken to me that way, three short years ago. And I imagine he knows it. For, after all, a change has been taking place, insubstantial and unseen and subterranean, a settling of the foundations of life which comes not only to a building as it grows older but also to the heart as it grows older. And I’m worried about the future.
Monday the—Monday the I-forget-what
It’s Monday, blue Monday, that’s all I remember, except that there’s a rift in the lute of life at Alabama Ranch. Yesterday of course was Sunday. And out of that day of rest Dinky-Dunk spent just five hours over at Casa Grande. When he showed up, rather silent and constrained and an hour and a half late for dinner, I asked him what had happened.
He explained that he’d been adjusting the carbureter on Lady Alicia’s new car.
“Don’t you think, Duncan,” I said, trying to speak calmly, though I was by no means calm inside, “that it’s rather a sacrifice of dignity, holding yourself at that woman’s beck and call?”
“We happen to be under a slight debt of obligation to that woman,” my husband retorted, clearly more upset than I imagined he could be.
“But, Dinky-Dunk, you’re not her hired man,” I protested, wondering how, without hurting him, I could make him see the thing from my standpoint.
“No, but that’s about what I’m going to become,” was his altogether unexpected answer.