t to tell you. Many things have happened since I last wrote,
and Zebulon Pike is not done for by any means, but I guess I will tell
you my newest experience.

I am making a wedding dress. Don't grin; it isn't mine,--worse luck!
But I must begin at the beginning. Just after I wrote you before, there
came a terrific storm which made me appreciate indoor coziness, but as
only Baby and I were at home I expected to be very lonely. The snow was
just whirling when I saw some one pass the window. I opened the door
and in came the dumpiest little woman and two daughters. She asked me
if I was "Mis' Rupit." I told her that she had almost guessed it, and
then she introduced herself. She said she was "Mis' Lane," that she had
heard there was a new stranger in the country, so she had brought her
twin girls, Sedalia and Regalia, to be neighborly. While they were
taking off their many coats and wraps it came out that they were from
Linwood, thirty miles away. I was powerful glad I had a pot roast and
some baked beans.

After we had put the horses in the barn we had dinner and I heard the
story of the girls' odd names. The mother is one of those "comfy," fat
little women who remain happy and bubbling with fun in spite of hard
knocks. I had already fallen in love with Regalia, she is so jolly and
unaffected, so fat and so plain. Sedalia has a veneer of most
uncomfortable refinement. She was shocked because Gale ate all the
roast she wanted, and if I had been very sensitive I would have been in
tears, because I ate a helping more than Gale did.

But about the names. It seemed that "Mis' Lane" married quite young,
was an orphan, and had no one to tell her things she should have known.
She lived in Missouri, but about a year after her marriage the young
couple started overland for the West. It was in November, and one night
when they had reached the plains a real blue blizzard struck them.
"Mis' Lane" had been in pain all day and soon she knew what was the
matter. They were alone and it was a day's travel back to the last
house. The team had given out and the wind and sleet were seeing which
could do the most meanness. At last the poor man got a fire started and
a wagon sheet stretched in such a manner that it kept off the sleet. He
fixed a bed under the poor shelter and did all he could to keep the
fire from blowing away, and there, a few hours later, a little girl
baby was born. They melted sleet in the frying-pan to get water to wash