“Do you know, Mr. Boyle, I think men are the most irresponsible creatures!  A woman wouldn’t turn her family over to a neighbor and go off like that for three or four years, just chasing a sunbeam.  I—­I’m horribly disappointed in father.  A man has no right to a family when he puts everything else first in his mind.  He’ll be gone three or four years, and will spend all he has, and we—­can shift for ourselves.  He only left us a hundred dollars, to use in an emergency!  He was afraid he might need the rest to buy out a claim or get machinery or something.  So if we don’t like it here we’ll have to stay, anyway.  We—­we’re ‘up against it,’ as you fellows say.”

[Illustration:  “WE—­WE’RE ‘UP AGAINST IT,’ AS YOU FELLOWS SAY.”]

Charming Billy, fumbling the latigo absently, felt a sudden belligerence toward her father.  “He ought to have his head punched good and plenty!” he blurted sympathetically.

To his amazement Miss Bridger drew herself up and started for the door.  “I’m very sorry you don’t like the idea of us being here, Mr. Boyle,” she replied coldly, “but we happen to be here, and I’m afraid you’ll just have to make the best of it!”

Billy was at that moment pulling off the saddle.  By the time he had carried it from the stall, hung it upon its accustomed spike and hurried to the door, Miss Bridger was nowhere to be seen.  He said “Hell!” under his breath, and took long steps to the house, but she did not appear to be there.  It was “Mama Joy,” yellow-haired, extremely blue-eyed, and full-figured, who made his coffee and gave him delicious things to eat—­things which he failed properly to appreciate, because he ate with his ears perked to catch the faintest sound of another woman’s steps and with his eyes turning constantly from door to window.  He did not even know half the time what Mama Joy was saying, or see her dimples when she smiled; and Mama Joy was rather proud of her dimples and was not accustomed to having them overlooked.

He was too proud to ask, at supper time, where Miss Bridger was.  She did not choose to give him sight of her, and so he talked and talked to Dill, and even to Mama Joy, hoping that Miss Bridger could hear him and know that he wasn’t worrying a darned bit.  He did not consider that he had said anything so terrible.  What had she gone on like that about her father for, if she couldn’t stand for any one siding in with her?  Maybe he had put his sympathy a little too strong, but that is the way men handle each other.  She ought to know he wasn’t sorry she was there.  Why, of course she knew that!  The girl wasn’t a fool, and she must know a fellow would be plumb tickled to have her around every day.  Well, anyway, he wasn’t going to begin by letting her lead him around by the nose, and he wasn’t going to crumple down on his knees and tell her to please walk all over him.

“Well, anyway,” he summed up at bedtime with a somewhat doubtful satisfaction, “I guess she’s kinda got over the notion that I’m so blame comfortable—­like I was an old grandpa-setting-in-the-corner.  She’s got to get over it, by thunder!  I ain’t got to that point yet; hell, no!  I should say I hadn’t!”