“The Book of Hiram,” said Mrs. Yellett, angling for time, “is a book—­it do surprise me that it escapes your notice back East.  You ever heard tell of the Book of Mormon?”

Mary assented.

“Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of Mormon, only a heap more undefiled.  The youngest child can read it without asking a single embarrassing question of its elder, and the oldest sinner can read it without having any fleshly meditations intrudin’ on his piety.”

The Yellett family had by this time dispersed itself for the afternoon, and the matriarch and the two girls started in to clear away the meal and wash the dishes.

“That’s the kind of book for me,” continued Mrs. Yellett, vigorously swishing about in the soapy water.  “Story-books don’t count none with me these days.  It’s my opinion that things are snarled up a whole lot too much in real life without pestering over the anguish of print folks.  Flesh and blood suffering goes without a groan of sympathy from the on-lookers, while novel characters wade to the neck in compassion.  I’ve pondered on that a whole lot, seem’ a heap of indifference to every-day calamity, and the way I assay it is like this:  print folks has terrible fanciful layouts given to their griefs and worriments by the authors of their being.  The trimmings to their troubles is mighty attractive.  Don’t you reckon I’d be willin’ to have a spell of trouble if I had a sweeping black velvet dress to do it in?  Yes, indeed, I’d be willin’ to turn a few of them shades of anguish, ‘gray’s ashes,’ ‘pale as death,’ and so on, if they’d give me the dress novel ladies seems to have for them special occasions.”

“But you used to like novels, you know you did, Mrs. Yellett,” observed Judith Rodney.

“Yes, I didn’t always entertain these views concernin’ romance.  You wouldn’t believe it, but there was a time when I just nacherally went careerin’ round enveloped in fantasies.  I was young then—­just about the time I married paw.  Every novel that was read to me, I mean that I read”—­Mrs. Yellett blushed a deep copper color through her many coats of tan—­“convinced me that I was the heroine thereof.  And, nacherally, I turned over to paw the feachers and characteristics of the hero in said book I happened to be enjoyin’ at the time.  Paw never knew it, but sometimes he was a dook, and it was plumb hard work.  Just about as hard as ropin’ a mountain-lion an’ sayin’, ’remember, you are a sheep from this time henceforth, and trim your action accordin’.’  I’d say to paw, ’Let’s walk together in the gloaming, here in this deserted garden’; and paw would say, ‘Name o’ Gawd, woman, have you lost your mind?  It’s plumb three hundred and fifty miles to the Tivoli beer-garden in Cheyenne, and it ain’t deserted, either!’

“Then I’d wring my hands in anguish, same as the Lady Mary, an’ paw would declare I was locoed.  He seemed a heap more nacheral when I pretended he was ‘Black Ranger, the Pirate King.’  His language came in handy, and his cartridge-belt and pistol all came in Black Ranger’s outfit.  Yes, it was a heap easier playing he was a pirate than a dook.  All this happened back to Salt Lake, where me an’ paw was married.”