Mrs. Yellett then unrolled the pillow constructed the night previous of such garments as she had been willing to dispense with, and put them on.  The vastness of her surroundings did not prevent her from locating the minutest article, and Mary gave her the respectful admiration of a woman who has spent a great deal of time searching for things in an infinitely smaller space.  The matriarch then called the remaining members of her household officially—­the Misses Yellett accomplished their early morning toilets with the simplicity of young robins.  Only the new governess hung back, but finally mustered up enough courage to say that if such a thing was possible she would like to have a bath.

Mrs. Yellett greeted her request with the amused tolerance of one who has never given such a trifle a thought.

“The habit of bathing,” she commented, “is shore like religion:  them that observes it wonders how them that neglects it gets along.”  She beckoned Mary to follow, and led the way to a bunch of willows that grew about a stone’s-throw from the camp.  “Here be a whole creek full of water, if you don’t lack the fortitood.  It’s cold enough to sell for ten cents a glass down to Texas.”

Somewhat dismayed, Mary stepped gingerly into the creek.  Its intense cold numbed her at first, but a second later awoke all her young lustiness, and she returned to camp in a fine glow of courage to encounter whatever else there might be of novelty.  Mrs. Yellett was preparing breakfast at a sheet-iron stove, assisted by Cacta and Clematis.

“Your hankering after a bath like this”—­she added another handful of flour to the biscuit dough—­“do shore remind me of an Englishman who come to visit near Laramie in the days of plenty, when steers had jumped to forty-five.  This yere Britisher was exhibit stock, shore enough, being what’s called a peer of the realm, which means, in his own country, that he is just nacherally entitled from the start to h’ist his nose high.

“The outfit he was goin’ to visit wasn’t in the habit of havin’ peers drop in on them casual, but they aimed to make him feel that he wasn’t the first of the herd that headed that way by a quart”—­she cut four biscuits with a tin cup, and resumed—­“to which end they rounded up every specimen of canned food that’s ever come across the Rockies.

“’Let him ask for “salmon esplinade,” let him ask for “chicken marine-go,” let him ask for plum-pudding, let him ask for hair-oil or throat lozengers, this yere outfit calls his bluff,’ says Billy Ames, who owns the ‘twin star’ outfit and is anticipatin’ this peer as a guest.

“Well, just as everything is ready, the can-opener, sharp as a razor, waitin’ to open up such effete luxuries as the peer may demand, Bill Ames gets called to California by the sickness of his wife.  He feels mean about abandonin’ the peer, but he don’t seem to have no choice, his wife bein’ one of them women who shares her bad health pretty impartially round the family.  So Billy he departs.  But before he goes he expounds to Joplin Joe, his foreman, the nature of a peer and how his wants is apt to be a heap fashionable, and that when he asks for anything to grasp the can-opener and run to the store-house—­Cacta, you put on the coffee!