old man and the old 'oman; loudly praised the dishes she
preferred, asking to be helped to them three or four times; ate with her
knife, dipping the same knife into the saltcellar or the butter dish; and,
indeed, she shocked good taste in many ways.

How, indeed, could Angus Anglesea ever have married such a woman?

It was not until after tea, when the family party were assembled in the
drawing room, and Mrs. Force had sent away the two little girls, in charge
of their governess, that the story of that marriage was told.

There were present Mr. and Mrs. Force, Leonidas and Mrs. Anglesea.

They were gathered around the open grate, where a glowing fire of sea coal
burned.

"Yes," said the woman, putting her feet upon the low, brass fender and
drawing up the edge of her dress, to toast her ankles, "this is just as
good a time to tell you all about it as any other, now that the young uns
are gone to roost. I hate to talk about the wickedness of the world before
the young uns; they will find it out quick enough for themselves, poor
things! Well, you want to know what in the name o' sense ever possessed me
to marry that beat, don't you?" she inquired of Mrs. Force.

It was not exactly the way in which the lady had put the question of the
marriage to herself, but she bowed her head in assent.

"Well, then, my late husband, Zeb Wright, made a big fortune in the mines.
Him and me was one of the very first that went out to the diggings. And he
made his big pile by real hard hand work--and by none o' your blasting and
crushing and lifting machines and things.

"And the year he died he had put away a hundred and twenty-three thousand,
four hundred and fifty dollars in the Californy Miners' Saving Bank.

"And we might 'a' retired on that, but we was still in the prime o' life,
nyther of us forty years old then--and I'm not now--and so he said we
could go on for another ten year and make another hundred thousand, and
then go back to the East and live offen it in grand style.

"But, Lord! who can tell what a day may bring forth, let alone ten year?
One autumn day he came home to me, in our shanty at Wild Cats' Gulch, with
a hard chill, and in two hours, just as the turn of the cold fit into the
hot one, he had a little spasm and went right off.

"Well, I was all alone, having of no child'en. But the boys they was very
good to me, and seen to the funeral and all that. And, after it was all
over, I stayed on in the shanty, pa