And Hazel, being keyed to a fearful pitch, unwisely snapped back:
"I hope so."
Which caused Mrs. Briggs' gaze to follow her wonderingly as she went hastily to her own room.
Like other mean souls of similar pattern, it suited Mr. Perkins to seek revenge in the only way possible—by confidentially relating to divers individuals during that evening the Granville episode in the new teacher's career. At least, Hazel guessed he must have told the tale of that ambiguously worded bequest and the subsequent gossip, for as early as the next day she caught certain of Jim Briggs' boarders looking at her with an interest they had not heretofore displayed—or, rather, it should be said, with a different sort of interest. They were discussing her. She could not know it positively, but she felt it.
The feeling grew to certainty after Perkins' departure that day. There was a different atmosphere. Probably, she reflected, he had thrown in a few embellishments of his own for good measure. She felt a tigerish impulse to choke him. But she was proud, and she carried her head in the air, and, in effect, told Cariboo Meadows to believe as it pleased and act as it pleased. They could do no more than cut her and cause her to lose her school. She managed to keep up an air of cool indifference that gave no hint of the despairing protest that surged close to the surface. Individually and collectively, she reiterated to herself, she despised men. 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. She felt that those shadowy woods were less sinister than man. And since she had always kept her sense of direction and come straight to the Meadows whenever she went abroad, she had no fear or thought of losing her way.
A mile or so distant a bare spot high on a wooded ridge struck her as a likely place to get an unobstructed view. To reach some height and sit in peace, staring out over far-spreading vistas, contented her. She could put away the unpleasantness of the immediate past, discount the possible sordidness of the future, and lose herself in dreams.
To reach her objective point, she crossed a long stretch of rolling land, well timbered, dense in parts with thickets of berry bushes. Midway in this she came upon a little brook, purring a monotone as it crawled over pebbled reaches and bathed the tangled roots of trees along its brink. By this she sat a while. Then she idled along, coming after considerable difficulty to abruptly rising ground. Though in the midst of timber the sun failed to penetrate, she could always see it through the branches and so gauge her line of travel. On the hillside it was easier, for the forest thinned out. Eventually she gained a considerable height, and while she failed to reach the opening seen from the Meadows, she found another that served as well. The sun warmed it, and the sun rays were pleasant to bask in, for autumn drew close, and there was a coolness in the shade even at noon. She could not see the town, but she could mark the low hills behind it. At any rate, she knew where it lay, and the way back.
So she thought. But the short afternoon fled, and, warned by the low dip of the sun, she left her nook on the hillside to make her way home. Though it was near sundown, she felt no particular concern. The long northern twilight gave her ample time to cover the distance.