“Well, you ain’t so bad looking as I thought for,” Maria continued, flashing a wicked glance at me, with her large eyes, that stirred my blood, in defiance of her forwardness and vulgarity.  “We shall be cronies, I know.  Only let me have my own way, and make love to me, and we shall get along quite pleasantly.”

“But you forget your husband,” I insinuated, seeing that that worthy individual began to look rather black at the idea of having a rival in his wife’s affections.

“O Lord! what’s the use of mentioning Barney?  He’s a poor coot, and will soon get used to my ways; won’t you, deary?”

The husband didn’t make an audible reply, but I understood him to say “Damn,” quite distinctly.

“What have you got for supper!” our female visitor asked.  “I’m hungry enough to eat a two-year-old baby.  Let me have something, that’s a good feller, and then we’ll talk about other matters.”

I didn’t admire her impudence, but as Fred was inclined to keep in the background, and Smith wouldn’t respond, I had to do the honors of the house with as much dignity as possible.  I seated her at our rough table, and helped her liberally, and was pleased to see that absence from her haunts in London had not diminished her appetite, or caused a regretful feeling in her heart.

“I’m glad I accepted the chance to visit this country,” she said, “for I begin to like it.  The old fogies promised that I should have a husband as soon as I arrived, and they kept their word, but I wished that I’d got a larger one.  I don’t like little men, and never did.”

Her husband was heard to observe that he preferred a quiet woman to a noisy one, but the remark didn’t seem to make much of an impression.  “By the way,” Mrs. Barney cried, “where am I to sleep to-night? in that little room?”

Before we could answer her, she arose from the table and ran towards it, and saw our patient lying upon the bed.

“Hullo!” she exclaimed, in astonishment, “what is that old fellow doing there?  I can’t have him with me!”

I explained to her that a bed had been provided in a tent but a few feet from the store, where she and her husband could make themselves comfortable, if they were so disposed, but she would not listen to me.

“Do you s’pose,” she cried, “that I’m such a fool as to sleep out under a tent, where I shall be liable to be eaten up by the savages?  My old man can sleep there, but I’m going to pass the night in the store.”

We assured her that we could not consent to any such arrangement.  That all our papers and every thing that we possessed in the world was in the store, and that we could not think of leaving under any consideration whatever.

“Well, who wants you to leave?” she demanded, with a flash of her amorous eyes, that would have told powerfully on men of more nerve than ourselves; “there can be no harm if I stay here.  You are men of honor, I suppose?”