When we feel displeased or disappointed at any thing, we are always saying that that is about the best that could be done. "What else could she do? The woman's ill; the Widder is sick. She sends for a woman, a bad woman, p'raps, but the best we got. Well, a woman's better as a man, any ways you puts it. What else could she do? A bad woman's better as a good man. What else could she do? I puts it to you, what else could she do?"
The crowd at the Howling Wilderness was satisfied. But the men stood there or sat in knots around the bar-room in silence. The crimson-headed bar-keeper had not seen such a dull day of it since they had the double funeral. What could be the matter? Men made all kinds of guesses, but somehow no one hinted that the little woman was mad.
The Roaring Whirlpool, as the Howling Wilderness was sometimes called, drew in but few victims all that night. Men kept away, kept going out and looking up toward the little cabin on the hill.
The man with the silver faro-box sat by the table with the green cloth, as if in a brown study. The great fire blazed up and snapped as if angry, for but few men gathered about it all that evening. The little brown mice up in the loft could be heard nibbling at the old boots and bacon rinds, and their little teeth ticked and rattled together as if the upper half of the Howling Wilderness had been the shop of a mender of watches. Now and then the man behind the silver faro-box filliped the pack of cards with his fingers, turned up the heels of a jack in the most unexpected sort of way, as if just to keep his hand in, but the mice had it mostly their own way all that night.
One by one the men who stood waiting dropped away and out of the line to get their dinners, but still enough stood there the livelong night to pass a message from mouth to mouth with the speed of a telegram into town.
Then these men standing there, and those who went away, as to that, fell to thinking of Bunker Hill. Somehow, she had advanced wonderfully in the estimation of all from the moment she had been sent for by the Widow. It was a sort of special dignity that had been conferred. This woman, Bunker Hill, had been knighted by their queen. She had been picked out, and set apart and over and above all the other fallen women of the Forks.
Even Limber Tim, who stood there on one leg, with his back screwed tight up against the palings, began to like her overmuch, and to wonder why she also would not make some honest man an honest wife. In fact, many men that night recalled many noble acts on the part of this poor woman, and they almost began to feel ashamed that they had sometimes laughed at her plainness, and promised in their hearts to never do so again.