“This afflicted person is—­” hesitated the Judge.

“Jim,” said Miggles.

“Your father?”

“No.”

“Brother?”

“No.”

“Husband?”

Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady passengers who I had noticed did not participate in the general masculine admiration of Miggles, and said gravely, “No; it’s Jim.”

There was an awkward pause.  The lady passengers moved closer to each other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and the tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at this emergency.  But Miggles’s laugh, which was very infectious, broke the silence.  “Come,” she said briskly, “you must be hungry.  Who’ll bear a hand to help me get tea?”

She had no lack of volunteers.  In a few moments Yuba Bill was engaged like Caliban in bearing logs for this Miranda; the expressman was grinding coffee on the veranda; to myself the arduous duty of slicing bacon was assigned; and the Judge lent each man his good-humored and voluble counsel.  And when Miggles, assisted by the Judge and our Hibernian “deck passenger,” set the table with all the available crockery, we had become quite joyous, in spite of the rain that beat against windows, the wind that whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who whispered together in the corner, or the magpie who uttered a satirical and croaking commentary on their conversation from his perch above.  In the now bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were papered with illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and discrimination.  The furniture was extemporized, and adapted from candle boxes and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico, or the skin of some animal.  The armchair of the helpless Jim was an ingenious variation of a flour barrel.  There was neatness, and even a taste for the picturesque, to be seen in the few details of the long low room.

The meal was a culinary success.  But more, it was a social triumph—­chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in guiding the conversation, asking all the questions herself, yet bearing throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of any concealment on her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, of our prospects, of the journey, of the weather, of each other—­of everything but our host and hostess.  It must be confessed that Miggles’s conversation was never elegant, rarely grammatical, and that at times she employed expletives the use of which had generally been yielded to our sex.  But they were delivered with such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes, and were usually followed by a laugh—­a laugh peculiar to Miggles—­so frank and honest that it seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.