Her resentment had not yet extended to the
women of Cariboo Meadows. They were mostly too busy with their work to
be much in the foreground. She did observe, or thought she observed, a
certain coolness in Mrs. Briggs' manner--a sort of suspended judgment.
In the meantime, she labored diligently at her appointed task of
drilling knowledge into the heads of a dozen youngsters. From nine
until three-thirty she had that to occupy her mind to the exclusion of
more troublesome things. When school work for the day ended, she went
to her room, or sat on the porch, or took solitary rambles in the
immediate vicinity, avoiding the male contingent as she would have
avoided contagious disease. Never, never, she vowed, would she trust
another man as far as she could throw him.
The first Saturday after the Perkins incident, Hazel went for a tramp
in the afternoon. She avoided the little hill close at hand. It left
a bad taste in her mouth to look at the spot. This was foolish, and
she realized that it was foolish, but she could not help the
feeling--the insult was still too fresh in her mind. So she skirted
its base and ranged farther afield. The few walks she had taken had
lulled all sense of uneasiness in venturing into the infolding forest.
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