how butter and
eggs reached the ultimate consumer--a visiting Odd-Fellows' band was
playing a two-step on the balcony of the Commercial Hotel. Susie and I
stopped the car, and while Struthers stared at us aghast from the back
seat, we two-stepped together on the main street of Buckhorn. We just
let the music go to our heads and danced there until the crowd in
front of the band began to right-about-face and a cowboy in chaps
brazenly announced that he was Susie's next partner. So we danced to
our running-board, stepped into our devil-wagon, and headed for home,
in the icy aura of Struthers' sustained indignation.

I begin to get terribly tired of propriety. I don't know whether it's
Struthers, or Struthers and Gershom combined, or having to watch one's
step so when there are children about one. But I'm tired of being
respectable. I'm tired of holding myself in. I warn the world that I'm
about ready for anything, anything from horse-stealing to putting a
dummy-lady in Whinstane Sandy's bed. I don't believe there's any
wickedness that's beyond me. I'm a reckless and abandoned woman. And
if that cold-blooded old Covenanter doesn't get home from Calgary
pretty soon I'm going buckboard riding with Bud Teetzel!

I've been asking Susie if we measure up to her expectations. She said,
in reply, that we fitted in to a T. For her Uncle Peter, she
acknowledged, had already done us in oils on the canvas of her
curiosity. She accused me, however, of reveling in that primitiveness
which is the last resort of the sophisticated--like the log cabins the
city folk fashion for themselves when they get up in the Adirondacks.
And Casa Grande, she further amended, impressed her as being almost
disappointingly comfortable.

After that Susie fell to talking about Peter. She is affectionately
contemptuous toward her uncle, protesting that he's forever throwing
away his chances and letting other people impose on his good nature.
It was lucky, averred Susie, that he was born with a silver spoon in
his mouth. For he was a hopeless espouser of Lost Causes. She inclined
to the belief that he should have married young, should have married
young and had a flock of children, for he was crazy about kiddies.

I asked Susie what sort of wife Peter should have chosen. And Susie
said Peter should have hitched up with a good, capable,
practical-minded woman who could manage him without letting him know
he was being managed. There was a widow in the East, a