“I don’t know,” her mother replied; “I should have to make it over if you did take it.  Maybe we can have a new one.”

“No, we can’t have a new one, I know, for Aunt Deb said so, but she is going to give me her brown dress and you her gray one; she said so the day I helped her iron.  We’ll have those to make over.”

For the first time I noticed the discontented lines on our hostess’s face, and it suddenly occurred to me that we were in the house of the Bishop’s second wife.  Before I knew I was coming on this journey I thought of a dozen questions I wanted to ask the Bishop, but I could never ask that care-worn little woman anything concerning their peculiar belief.  However, I was spared the trouble, for soon the children retired and the conversation drifted around to Mormonism and polygamy; and our hostess seemed to want to talk, so I just listened, for Mrs. O’Shaughnessy rather likes to “argufy”; but she had no argument that night, only her questions started our hostess’s story.

She had been married to the Bishop not long before the manifesto, and he had been married several years then to Debbie.  But Debbie had no children, and all the money the Bishop had to start with had been his first wife’s; so when it became necessary for him to discard a wife it was a pretty hard question for him because a little child was coming to the second wife and he had nothing to provide for her with except what his first wife’s money paid for.  The first wife said she would consent to him starting the second, if she filed on land and paid her back a small sum every year until it was all paid back.  So he took the poor “second,” after formally renouncing her, and helped her to file on the land she now lives on.  He built her a small cabin, and so she started her career as a “second.”  I suppose the “first” thought she would be rid of the second, who had never really been welcome, although the Bishop could never have married a “second” without her consent.

“I would never consent,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.

“Oh, yes, you would if you had been raised a Mormon,” said our hostess.  “You see, we were all of us children of polygamous parents.  We have been used to plural marriages all our lives.  We believe that such experience fits us for our after-life, as we are only preparing for life beyond while here.”

“Do you expect to go to heaven, and do you think the man who married you and then discarded you will go to heaven too?” asked Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.

“Of course I do,” she replied.

“Then,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, “I am afraid if it had been mysilf I’d have been after raising a little hell here intirely.”

Our hostess was not offended, and there followed a long recital of earlier-day hard times that you would scarcely believe any one could live through.  It seems the first wife in such families is boss, and while they do not live in the same homes, still she can very materially affect the other’s comfort.