The fat lady had never relaxed her gaze from Chugg’s back since the stage had started.  She peered at that broad expanse of flannel shirt through the tiny round window, like a careful sailing-master sweeping the horizon for possible storm-clouds.  At every portion of the road presenting a steep decline she would prod Chugg in the back with the handle of her ample umbrella, and demand that he let her out, as she preferred walking.  The stage-driver at first complied with these requests, but when he saw they threatened to become chronic, he would send his team galloping down grade at a rate to justify her liveliest fears.

“Do you think you are a-picnicking, that you crave roominating round these yere solitoodes?” And the misanthrope cracked his whip and adjured his team with cabalistic imprecations.

“Did you notice if Mrs. Dax giv’ him any cold coffee, same as she did us?” anxiously inquired the fat lady from her lookout.

Mary hadn’t noticed.

“He’s drinking something out of a brown bottle—­seems to relish it a heep more’n he would cold coffee,” reported the watch.  “Hi there!  Hi!  Mr. Chugg!” The stage-driver, thinking it was merely a request to be allowed to walk, continued to drive with one hand and hold the brown bottle with the other.  But even his too solid flesh was not proof against the continued bombardment of the umbrella handle.

“Um-m-m,” he grunted savagely, applying a watery eye to the round window.

“Nothing,” answered the fat lady, quite satisfied at having her worst fears confirmed.

Chugg returned to his driving, as one not above the weakness of seeing and hearing things.

“’Tain’t coffee.”

“Could you smell it?” questioned Mary, anxiously.

“You never can tell that way, when they are plumb pickled in it, like him.”

“Then how did you know it wasn’t coffee?”

“His eyes had fresh watered.”

Mary collapsed under this expert testimony.  “What are we going to do about it?”

“Appeal to him as a gentleman,” said the fat lady, not without dramatic intonation.

“You appeal,” counselled Mary; “I saw him look at you admiringly when you were walking down that steep grade.”

“Is that so?” said the fat lady, with a conspicuous lack of incredulity; and she put her hand involuntarily to her frizzes.

This time she did not trust to the umbrella-handle as a medium of communication between the stage-driver and herself.  Putting her hand through the port-hole she grasped Chugg’s arm—­the bottle arm—­with no uncertain grip.

“Why, Mr. Chugg, this yere place is getting to be a regular summer resort; think of two ladies trusting themselves to your protection and travelling out over this great lonesome desert.”

Chugg’s mind, still submerged in local Lethe waters, grappled in silence with the problem of the feminine invasion, and then he muttered to himself rather than to the fat lady, “Nowhere’s safe from ’em; women and house-flies is universally prevailing.”