“Great Scott!” said Rutherford, “is he a Mormon?”
Morgan shook his head, and Houston said:
“Morgan, I think in your efforts to be entertaining, you are drawing slightly on your imagination, thinking that we are fresh enough to believe anything you choose to tell us.”
“No, it’s all true, whether you believe it or not. That man left a wife and family of children somewhere in New York State, more than ten years ago, and ran away with another woman; they have five or six children, and here, about three years ago, since I came here, he got his divorce from the first woman, and married this one. Then he spent last winter in San Francisco, and it seems now, that he circulated around there under another name,––and his name is no more Rivers, than mine is Jenks,––and passed himself off for an unmarried man, and now there’s a woman there has entered suit against him, for breach of promise.”
“Well,” said Rutherford, descending from his elevated position, “I move that we adjourn to the boarding house at once; if I hear any more such stuff, I’ll lose my appetite.”
“The mystery to me is,” said Houston, when they were started on their way to the house, “how such a man is allowed to live and do business in a respectable community.”
“Oh,” said Morgan carelessly, “he isn’t any worse than the rest of ’em, only he’s a little more out and out with it; and the rest of ’em know it, and as long as they all live in glass houses, they don’t any of ’em want to throw any stones.”
“It cannot be quite as bad as that,” said Houston.
“Well, I’ve found ’em all about alike, men and women too, for that matter, though I believe you shut me off from expressing my views about women.”
“But you certainly would not include all women in such an assertion?” said Houston.