Springs, so I had a good nap and a late breakfast.  I did my shopping and was back at Green River at two that afternoon.  The first person I saw was Aggie.  She sat in the depot, glowering at everybody.  She had a basket of eggs and a pail of butter, which she had been trying to sell.  She was waiting for the night train, the only one she could get to Rock Springs.  I asked her had she overslept.  “No, I didna,” she replied.  Then, she proceeded to tell me that, as she had paid for a whole night’s use of a room, she had stayed to get its use.  That it had made her plans miscarry didn’t seem to count.

After all our business was attended to, we started for home.  The wagons were half a day ahead of us.  When we came in sight, we could see Aggie fanning the air with her long arms, and we knew they were quarreling.  I remarked that I could not understand how persons who hated each other so could live together.  Clyde told me I had much to learn, and said that really he knew of no other couple who were actually so devoted.  He said to prove it I should ask Aggie into the buggy with me and he would get in with Archie, and afterwards we would compare notes.  He drove up alongside of them, and Aggie seemed glad to make the exchange.  As we had the buggy, we drove ahead of the wagons.  It seems that Archie and Aggie are each jealous of the other.  Archie is as ugly a little monkey as it would be possible to imagine.  She bemeaned him until at last I asked her why she didn’t leave him, and added that I would not stand such crankiness for one moment.  Then she poured out the vials of her wrath upon my head, only I don’t think they were vials but barrels.

About sundown we made it to where we intended to camp and found that Mrs. O’Shaughnessy had established a sheep-camp there, and was out with her herd herself, having only Manny, a Mexican boy she had brought up herself, for a herder.  She welcomed us cordially and began supper for our entire bunch.  Soon the wagons came, and all was confusion for a few minutes getting the horses put away for the night.  Aggie went to her wagon as soon as it stopped and made secure her butter and eggs against a possible raid by Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.  Having asked too high a price for them, she had failed to sell them and was taking them back.  After supper we were sitting around the fire, Tam going over his account and lamenting that because of his absent-mindedness he had bought a whole hundred pounds of sugar more than he had intended, Aggie and Archie silent for once, pouting I suspect.  Clyde smiled across the camp-fire at me and said, “Gin ye had sic a lass as I hae, ye might blither.”  “Gin ye had sic a mon as mine—­” I began, but Mrs. O’Shaughnessy said, “Gin ye had sic a mon as I hae.”  Then we all three laughed, for we had each heard the same thing, and we knew the McEttricks wouldn’t fight each other.  They suspected us of laughing at them, for Archie said to Aggie, “Aggie, lass, is it sport they are making of our love?” “’T is daft they be, Archie, lad; we’ll nae mind their blither.”  She arose and shambled across to Archie and hunkered her big self down beside him.  We went to bed and left them peaceable for once.