“Pooty sizable room.  Dark’s a pocket ‘n’ hot’s a footstove.  Three or four Injuns talkin’ ‘n’ smokin’.  Scrap ’f a fire smoulder’in a kind ’f standee fireplace without any top.”

“That’s the sacred fire,” said Aunt Maria.  “How many old men were watching it?”

“Didn’t see any.”

“They must have been there.  Did you put the fire out?”

“No water handy,” explained the prudent Glover.

“You might have—­expectorated on it.”

“Reckon I didn’t miss it,” said the skipper, who was a chewer of tobacco and a dead shot with his juice.

“Of course nothing happened.”

“Nary.”

“I knew there wouldn’t,” declared the lady triumphantly.  “Well, now let us go back.  We know something about the religion of these people.  It is certainly a very interesting study.”

“Didn’t appear to me much l’k a temple,” ventured Glover.  “Sh’d say t’was a kind ‘f gineral smokin’ room ‘n’ jawin’ place.  Git together there ‘n’ talk crops ‘n’ ’lections ‘n’ the like.”

“You must be mistaken,” decided Aunt Maria.  “There was the sacred fire.”

She now led the willing captain (for he was as inquisitive as a monkey) on a round of visits to the houses of the Moquis.  She poked smiling through their kitchens and bedrooms, and gained more information than might have been expected concerning their spinning and weaving, cheerfully spending ten minutes in signs to obtain a single idea.

“Never shear their sheep till they are dead!” she exclaimed when that fact had been gestured into her understanding.  “Absurd!  There’s another specimen of masculine stupidity.  I’ll warrant you, if the women had the management of things, the good-for-nothing brutes would be sheared every day.”

“Jest as they be to hum,” slily suggested Glover, who knew better.

“Certainly,” said Aunt Maria, aware that cows were milked daily.

The Moquis were very hospitable; they absolutely petted the strangers.  At nearly every house presents were offered, such as gourds full of corn, strings of dried peaches, guavas as big as pomegranates, or bundles of the edible wrapping paper, all of which Aunt Maria declined with magnanimous waves of the hand and copious smiles.  Curious and amiable faces peeped at the visitors from the landings and doorways.

“How mild and good they all look!” said Aunt Maria.  “They put me in mind somehow of Shenstone’s pastorals.  How humanizing a pastoral life is, to be sure!  On the whole, I admire their way of not shearing their sheep alive.  It isn’t stupidity, but goodness of heart.  A most amiable people!”

“Jest so,” assented Glover.  “How it must go ag’in the grain with ’em to take a skelp when it comes in the way of dooty!  A man oughter feel willin’ to be skelped by sech tender-hearted critters.”

“Pshaw!” said Aunt Maria.  “I don’t believe they ever scalp anybody—­unless it is in self-defence.”