boys,
kinder playful, wanted to throw a hat at it and see if it wouldn't hang,
but they refrained, out of respect to the feelin's of the groom.

"From the start," continued Leander, "the two Mrs. Daxes just hankered to
get at each other; an' while I, as a slave to the fair sex"--here he bowed
to the fat lady and to Miss Carmichael--"hesitates to use such langwidge in
their presence, the attitood of them two female wimmin shorely reminds me
of a couple of unfriendly dawgs just hankerin' to chaw each other.

"At first, Johnnie waited on her hand an' foot, and she just read novels
and played stylish all the time and danced. She was the hardest dancer
that ever struck this yere trail, and she could give lessons to any old
war-dancin' chief up to the reservation. No dance she ever heard of was
too far for her to go to. She just went and danced till broad daylight.
Many a man would have took to dissipation, in his circumstances, but
Johnnie just lost heart and grew slatterly. Why, he'd leave his dishes go
from one day till the next--"

"There's more as would leave their dishes from one day till the next if
they wasn't looked after." And the wife of his bosom stood in the door
like a vengeful household goddess. Mr. Dax made a grab for the nearest
plates.

IV

Judith, The Postmistress

The arrival of Chugg's stage with the mail should have been coincident
with the departure of the stage that brought the travellers from "Town,"
but Chugg was late--a tardiness ascribed to indulgence in local lethe
waters, for Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank to forget that
woman is a variable and a changeable thing. In consequence of which the
sober stage-driver departed without the mails, leaving Mary Carmichael and
the fat lady to scan the horizon for the delinquent Chugg, and
incidentally to hear a chapter of prairie romance.

Some sort of revolution seemed to be in progress in the room in which the
travellers had breakfasted. Mrs. Dax had assumed the office of dictator,
with absolute sway. Leander, as aide-de-camp, courier, and staff, executed
marvellous feats of domestic engineering. The late breakfast-table, swept
and garnished with pigeon-holes, became a United States post-office,
prepared to transact postal business, and for the time being to become the
social centre of the surrounding country.

Down the yellow road that climbed and dipped and climbed and dipped again
over foot-hi