her strength. Also, she liked idleness; she could indulge in sleep and in day-dreaming indolence upon the warm sand to an extent amazing to her husband. But she never shirked any of her duties; she always arose to do them promptly and enthusiastically.
She had one daily task of which he did not learn for some time. Fidelia had brought along a new volume, bound in red leather, in which she continued her diary, writing in the mornings after David left her alone in camp. Once when he returned sooner than he had expected, he discovered her absorbed in her book; and her intentness was so great that he watched her in surprise.
When he stepped nearer and she heard him, she shut her book and arose, facing him with eyes aglow.
"David, it's our ninth day in camp!" she cried to him. "We must go back to-morrow!"
"Why?" he asked her; and added, "what was that you were doing?"
"My diary, David."
"I never knew you kept a diary."
"Oh, I have—ever since I was ten years old."
"I'd like to see that," he said; and as her fingers clasped more tightly on the book which she held closed, he amended by saying: "I'd like to see the one you kept when you were little, Fidelia."
It made him imagine her when she was a child, without a home but the schools to which she had been sent; it made him feel the loneliness of the little girl who had bought a blank book, when she was ten years old, to take the confidings of her troubles and her thoughts.
