But that she looked
upon as a closed chapter. He had hurt her where a woman can be most
deeply wounded--in her pride and her affections--and the hurt was
dulled by the smoldering resentment that thinking of him always fanned
to a flame. Miss Hazel Weir was neither meek nor mild, even if her
environment had bred in her a repression that had become second nature.
So with the charm of the wild land fresh upon her, she took kindly to
Cariboo Meadows. The immediate, disagreeable past bade fair to become
as remote in reality as the distance made it seem. Surely no ghosts
would walk here to make people look askance at her.
Her first afternoon she spent loafing on the porch of the Briggs
domicile, within which Mrs. Briggs, a fat, good-natured person of
forty, toiled at her cooking for the "boarders," and kept a brood of
five tumultuous youngsters in order--the combined tasks leaving her
scant time to entertain her newly arrived guest. From the vantage
ground of the porch Hazel got her first glimpse of the turns life
occasionally takes when there is no policeman just around the corner.
Cariboo Meadows, as a town, was simply a double row of buildings facing
each other across a wagon road.
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