Canada -- Fiction; Frontier and pioneer life -- Prairie Provinces -- Fiction
"But, oh, Dinky-Dunk, whatever happens, you must always love me!"--and I
imagine I swam for him with my Australian crawl-stroke again. All I
remember is that we went to sleep in each other's arms. And as I started
to say and forgot to finish, I'd been missing my Dinky-Dunk more than I
imagined, those last few days. After that night it was no longer just a
shack. It was "Home." Home--it's such a beautiful word! It must mean so
much to every woman. And I fell asleep telling myself it was the
loveliest word in the English language.
In the morning I slipped out of bed before Dinky-Dunk was awake, for
breakfast was to be our first home meal, and I wanted it to be a
respectable one. _Der Mensch ist was er isst_--so I must feed my lord
and master on the best in the land. Accordingly I put an extra
tablespoonful of cream in the scrambled eggs, and two whole eggs in the
coffee, to make dead sure it was crystal-clear. Then, feeling like Van
Roon when Berlin declared war on France, I rooted out Dinky-Dunk, made
him wash, and sat him down in his pajamas and his ragged old
dressing-gown.
"I suppose," I said as I saw his eyes wander about the table, "that you
feel exactly like an oyster-man who's just chipped his Blue-Point and
got his knife-edge in under the shell! And the next wrench is going to
tell you exactly what sort of an oyster you've got!"
Dinky-Dunk grinned up at me as I buttered his toast, piping hot from the
range. "Well, Lady Bird, you're not the kind that'll need paprika,
anyway!" he announced as he fell to. And he ate like a boa-constrictor
and patted his pajama-front and stentoriously announced that he'd picked
a queen--only he pronounced it kaveen, after the manner of our poor old
Swedish Olie!
As that was Sunday we spent the morning "pi-rooting" about the place.
Dinky-Dunk took me out and showed me the stables and the hay-stacks and
the granaries--which he'd just waterproofed so there'd be no more spoilt
grain on that farm--and the "cool-hole" he used to use before the cellar
was built, and the ruins of the sod-hut where the first homesteader that
owned that land had lived. Then he showed me the new bunk-house for the
men, which Olie is finishing in his spare time. It looks much better
than our own shack, being of planed lumber. But Dinky-Dunk is loyal to
the shack, and says it's really better built, and the warmest shack in
the West--as I'll find before winter is over.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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