"No moving out of here to-day," he muttered, with a sullen curse.
Bailey assumed a cheerful tone.
"No; we're in for another day of it."
Inwardly he was appalled at the thought of what the long hours might bring to him. To spend twenty-four hours more in this terrible constraint would be ghastly. He set about the attempt to break it up. He whistled and sang at his work, calling out to his partner as if there were no evil passions between them.
"This is the fourth blizzard this month. Good thing they didn't come last winter. This land wouldn't have been settled at all. What do you suppose these poor squatters will do?"
Rivers did not respond.
Blanche tried to rise, but turned white and dizzy, and fell back upon the bed, seized with a sudden weakness. Rivers brought her some tea and sat by her side, while Bailey again toasted some bread for her. She looked very weak and ill.
Bailey went out to feed the horses, glad of the chance to escape his problem for a moment. Finding Rivers still sullen upon his return, he got out some old magazines and read them aloud. Rivers swore under his breath, but Blanche listened to the reading with relief. The stories dealt mostly with young people who wished to marry, but were prevented by somebody who wished them to "wed according to their station." They were innocent creatures who had not known any other attachment, and their bliss was always complete and unalloyed at the end.
Bailey read the tender passages in the same prosaic tone with which he described the shipwreck, and his elocution would have been funny to any other group of persons; as it was, neither of his hearers smiled.
Blanche's heart was filled with rebellion. Why could she not have known Jim in the days when she, too, was young and innocent like the heroines of these stories?