V[ToC]
SEDALIA AND REGALIA
November 22, 1909.
My dear Friend,—
I was dreadfully afraid that my last letter was too much for you and now I feel plumb guilty. I really don't know how to write you, for I have to write so much to say so little, and now that my last letter made you sick I almost wish so many things didn't happen to me, for I always want to tell you. Many things have happened since I last wrote, and Zebulon Pike is not done for by any means, but I guess I will tell you my newest experience.
I am making a wedding dress. Don't grin; it isn't mine,—worse luck! But I must begin at the beginning. Just after I wrote you before, there came a terrific storm which made me appreciate indoor coziness, but as only Baby and I were at home I expected to be very lonely. The snow was just whirling when I saw some one pass the window. I opened the door and in came the dumpiest little woman and two daughters. She asked me if I was "Mis' Rupit." I told her that she had almost guessed it, and then she introduced herself. She said she was "Mis' Lane," that she had heard there was a new stranger in the country, so she had brought her twin girls, Sedalia and Regalia, to be neighborly. While they were taking off their many coats and wraps it came out that they were from Linwood, thirty miles away. I was powerful glad I had a pot roast and some baked beans.
After we had put the horses in the barn we had dinner and I heard the story of the girls' odd names. The mother is one of those "comfy," fat little women who remain happy and bubbling with fun in spite of hard knocks. I had already fallen in love with Regalia, she is so jolly and unaffected, so fat and so plain. Sedalia has a veneer of most uncomfortable refinement. She was shocked because Gale ate all the roast she wanted, and if I had been very sensitive I would have been in tears, because I ate a helping more than Gale did.
But about the names. It seemed that "Mis' Lane" married quite young, was an orphan, and had no one to tell her things she should have known. She lived in Missouri, but about a year after her marriage the young couple started overland for the West. It was in November, and one night when they had reached the plains a real blue blizzard struck them. "Mis' Lane" had been in pain all day and soon she knew what was the matter. They were alone and it was a day's travel back to the last house. The team had given out and the wind and sleet were seeing which could do the most meanness. At last the poor man got a fire started and a wagon sheet stretched in such a manner that it kept off the sleet. He fixed a bed under the poor shelter and did all he could to keep the fire from blowing away, and there, a few hours later, a little girl baby was born. They melted sleet in the frying-pan to get water to wash it. "Mis' Lane" kept feeling no better fast, and about the time they got the poor baby dressed a second little one came.