med to have seen into her sorrow
that I was really glad next morning when I heard Mr. Beeler's cheerful
voice calling, "All aboard!"

We had just finished breakfast, and few would ever guess that Mrs.
D---- knew a trial; she was so cheerful and so cordial as she bade us
good-bye and urged us to stop with her every time we passed through.

About noon that day we reached the railroad. The snow had delayed the
train farther north, so for once we were glad to have to wait for a
train, as it gave us time to get a bite to eat and to wash up a bit. It
was not long, however, till we were comfortably seated in the train. I
think a train ride might not be so enjoyable to most, but to us it was
a delight; I even enjoyed looking at the Negro porter, although I
suspect he expected to be called Mister. I found very soon after coming
West that I must not say "Uncle" or "Aunty" as I used to at home.

It was not long until they called the name of the town at which we
wanted to stop. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy had a few acquaintances there, but
we went to a hotel. We were both tired, so as soon as we had supper we
went to bed. The house we stopped at was warmer and more comfortable
than the average hotel in the West, but the partitions were very thin,
so when a couple of "punchers," otherwise cowboys, took the room next
to ours, we could hear every word they said.

It appears that one was English and the other a tenderfoot. The
tenderfoot was in love with a girl who had filed on a homestead near
the ranch on which he was employed, but who was then a waitress in the
hotel we were at. She had not seemed kind to the tenderfoot and he was
telling his friend about it. The Englishman was trying to instruct him
as to how to proceed.

"You need to be _very_ circumspect, Johnny, where females are
concerned, but you mustn't be too danged timid either."

"I don't know what the devil to say to her; I can barely nod my head
when she asks me will I take tea or coffee; and to-night she mixed it
because I nodded yes when she said, 'tea or coffee,' and it was the
dangdest mess I ever tried to get outside of."

"Well," the friend counseled, "you just get her into a corner some'eres
and say to 'er, 'Dearest 'Attie, I hoffer you my 'and hand my 'eart.'"

"But I _can't_," wailed Johnny. "I could never get her into a corner
anyway."

"If you can't, you're not hold enough to marry then. What the 'ell
would you do with a woman in the 'ouse if you couldn't cor