t reason for
wearing it out. A similar consideration of economy led her to flirt off
flies with her second best pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Dax presided over the
gathering with awful severity. Every one truckled to her shamefully,
receiving her lightest remarks as if they were to be inscribed on tablets
of bronze. Leander, his eyes bright with excitement at being received in
the family circle on an equal footing, balanced perilously on the edge of
his chair, anticipating dismissal.

"Chugg's never ben so late as this," said Mrs. Dax, rocking herself
furiously. She strongly resembled one of those mottled chargers of the
nursery whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the point of sending
forth flame. Leander, the fat lady, and Miss Carmichael meekly murmured
assent and condemnation.

"And there ain't a sign of him," said Mrs. Dax, returning to the house
after straining the landscape through her all-observant eye, and not
detecting him in any of the remote pin-pricks on the horizon, in which
these plainsfolk invariably decipher a herd of antelope, an elk or two, or
a horseman.

"Bet he had a woman in the stage and upset it with her," said Leander, in
the animated manner of a poor relation currying favor with a bit of news.

Mrs. Dax regarded him severely for a moment, then conspicuously addressed
her next remark to the ladies. "Bet he had a woman in the stage, the old
scoundrel!"

"Wonder who she was?" said Leander, with the sparkling triumph of a poor
relation whose surmise had been accepted. But Mrs. Dax had evidently
decided that Leander had gone far enough.

"Was you expectin' any of your lady friends by Chugg's stage that you are
so frettin' anxious?" she inquired, and the poor relation collapsed
miserably.

"You've heard about Chugg's goin' on since 'Mountain Pink' jilted him?"
inquired Mrs. Dax of the fat lady, as the only one of the party who might
have kept abreast with the social chronicles of the neighborhood.

"My land, yes," responded the fat lady, proud to be regarded as socially
cognizant. "M' son says he's plumb locoed about it--didn't want me to
travel by his stage. But I said he dassent upset a woman of my age--he just
nacherally dassent!"

Miss Carmichael, by dint of patient inquiry, finally got the story which
was popularly supposed to account for the misdemeanors of the
stage-driver, including his present delinquency that was delaying them on
their journey.

It appeared that Lemuel Chugg,