Part 6 (1/2)

”From the United States and everywhere,” Miss Ryan replied. ”Take me up to your room, dear, where we can talk our heads off.

”And, furthermore, Hazie, I'll be pleased to have you address me as Mrs. Brooks, my dear young woman,” the plump lady laughed, as she settled herself in a chair in Hazel's room.

”So you're married?” Hazel said.

”I am that,” Mrs. Kitty responded emphatically, ”to the best boy that ever drew breath. And so should you be, dear girl. I don't see how you've escaped so long--a good-looking girl like you. The boys were always crazy after you. There's nothing like having a good man to take care of you, dear.”

”Heaven save me from them!” Hazel answered bitterly. ”If you've got a good one, you're lucky. I can't see them as anything but self-centered, arrogant, treacherous brutes.”

”Lord bless us--it's worse than I thought!” Kitty jumped up and threw her arms around Hazel. ”There, there--don't waste a tear on them. I know all about it. I came over to see you just as soon as some of the girls--nasty little cats they are; a woman's always meaner than a man, dear--just as soon as they gave me an inkling of how things were going with you. Pshaw! The world's full of good, decent fellows--and you've got one coming.”

”I hope not,” Hazel protested.

”Oh, yes, you have,” Mrs. Brooks smilingly a.s.sured her. ”A woman without a man is only half a human being, anyway, you know--and vice versa. I know. We can cuss the men all we want to, my dear, and some of us unfortunately have a nasty experience with one now and then. But we can't get away from the fundamental laws of being.”

”If you'd had my experience of the last two weeks you'd sing a different tune,” Hazel vehemently declared. ”I hate--I--”

And then she gave way, and indulged in the luxury of turning herself loose on Kitty's shoulder. Presently she was able to wipe her eyes and relate the whole story from the Sunday Mr. Bush stopped and spoke to her in the park down to that evening.

Kitty nodded understandingly. ”But the girls have handed it to you worse than the men, Hazel,” she observed sagely. ”Jack Barrow was just plain crazy jealous, and a man like that can't help acting as he did.

You're really fortunate, I think, because you'd not be really happy with a man like that. But the girls that you and I grew up with--they should have stood by you, knowing you as they did; yet you see they were ready to think the worst of you. They nearly always do when there's a man in the case. That's a weakness of our s.e.x, dear. My, what a vindictive old Turk that Bush must have been! Well, you aren't working. Come and stay with me. Hubby's got a two-year contract with the World Advertising Company. We'll be located here that long at least. Come and stay with us. We'll show these little-minded folk a thing or two. Leave it to us.”

”Oh, no, I couldn't think of that, Kitty!” Hazel faltered. ”You know I'd love to, and it's awfully good of you, but I think I'm just about ready to go away from Granville.”

”Well, come and stop with us till you do go,” Kitty insisted. ”We are going to take a furnished cottage for a while. Though, between you and me, dear, knowing people as I do, I can't blame you for wanting to be where their nasty tongues can't wound you.”

But Hazel was obdurate. She would not inflict herself on the one friend she had left. And Kitty, after a short talk, berated her affectionately for her independence, and rose to go.

”For,” said she, ”I didn't get hold of this thing till Addie Horton called at the hotel this afternoon, and I didn't stop to think that it was near teatime, but came straight here. Jimmie'll think I've eloped.

So ta-ta. I'll come out to-morrow about two. I have to confab with a house agent in the forenoon. By-by.”

Hazel sat down and actually smiled when Kitty was gone. Somehow a grievous burden had fallen off her mind. Likewise, by some psychological quirk, the idea of leaving Granville and making her home elsewhere no longer struck her as running away under fire. She did not wish to subject Kitty Brooks to the difficulties, the embarra.s.sment that might arise from having her as a guest; but the mere fact that Kitty stood stanchly by her made the world seem less harsh and dreary, made it seem as if she had, in a measure, justified herself. She felt that she could adventure forth among strangers in a strange country with a better heart, knowing that Kitty Brooks would put a swift quietus on any gossip that came her way.

So that Hazel went down to the dining-room light-heartedly, and when the meal was finished came back and fell to reading her papers. The first of the Western papers was a Vancouver _World_. In a real-estate man's half-page she found a diminutive sketch plan of the city on the sh.o.r.es of Burrard Inlet, Canada's princ.i.p.al outpost on the far Pacific.

”It's quite a big place,” she murmured absently. ”One would be far enough away there, goodness knows.”

Then she turned to the ”Help Wanted” advertis.e.m.e.nts. The thing which impressed her quickly and most vividly was the dearth of demand for clerks and stenographers, and the repeated calls for domestic help and such. Domestic service she shrank from except as a last resort. And down near the bottom of the column she happened on an inquiry for a school-teacher, female preferred, in an out-of-the-way district in the interior of the province.

”Now, that--” Hazel thought.

She had a second-cla.s.s certificate tucked away among her belongings.

Originally it had been her intention to teach, and she had done so one term in a backwoods school when she was eighteen. With the ending of the term she had returned to Granville, studied that winter, and got her second certificate; but at the same time she had taken a business-college course, and the following June found her clacking a typewriter at nine dollars a week. And her teacher's diploma had remained in the bottom of her trunk ever since.

”I could teach, I suppose, by rubbing up a little on one or two subjects as I went along,” she reflected. ”I wonder now--”

What she wondered was how much salary she could expect, and she took up the paper again, and looked carefully for other advertis.e.m.e.nts calling for teachers. In the _World_ and in a Winnipeg paper she found one or two vacancies to fill out the fall term, and gathered that Western schools paid from fifty to sixty dollars a month for ”schoolma'ams”

with certificates such as she held.