There was a difference. Jerry did not know, nor care to analyze it, nor explain to herself, why these two people had in themselves alone begun to make New Eden worth while for her. She for whom things, human and otherwise, had heretofore been created—all except sand.
The third New-Edenite who had some special interests on this rainy day was Junius Brutus Ponk. Often an idler in the Macpherson Company's office, he was always interesting to York. There were never created two of his kind. That in itself made him worth while to the big, strong man of many affairs. And, much as York wanted to be alone to-day, he welcomed the coming of Ponk. In the long, serious conversation that followed, their usual bantering had no place. And when the little man went slowly out, and slowly crossed the street to the hotel, indifferent to the steady fall of rain, York Macpherson's eyes followed him earnestly.
"He'll almost forget to strut if that girl stays here—but she won't stay. And he will strut. He's made that way. But down under it all he's a man, God bless him—a man any woman could trust."
Up at "Castle Cluny" the rainy day brought one caller whom "chilling winds nor poisonous breath" could never halt—Mrs. Stellar Bahrr, otherwise—"the Big Dipper"—the town gossip.
Mrs. Stellar Bahrr was a married, widowed-by-divorce, old-maid type, built like a sky-scraper, of the lean, uncertain age just around sixty, with the roundness of youth all gone, and the plump beauty of matronliness all lacking, wrinkled with envy and small malice, living on repeating what New Eden wanted kept untold. Hiding what New Eden should have known of her, she maintained herself on a pension from some one, known only to York Macpherson, and the small income derived just now from trimming over last year's hats "to make them look like four-year-olds," York declared.
The real milliner of the town was a brisk, bright business woman who had Stellar Bahrr on her trail in season and out of season. Mrs. Bahrr herself could not have kept up a business of any kind for a week, for she changed callings almost with the moon's phases.
No more unwelcome caller could have intruded on the homey, delicious, rainy-day seclusion of "Castle Cluny."
"I jis' run in to see the hat again you're goin' to wear to-morrow, Miss Laury. I 'ain't got more 'n a minute. Ye ain't alone this dreary day, are ye? The Lenwells was sayin' last night your brother was goin' to the upper Sage Brush on some business with the Posers. But they're in town, rainy as it is, an' all. Did he go?"
"No, he put it off till Monday," Laura replied, wondering what interest York's going or coming could be to Stellar Bahrr.
"As I was sayin', the Posers is in town. Come to meet Nell and her baby. They come in on the freight yesterday. The biggest, bald-headest young un you ever see. Nell wants her hat fixed over, and nothin' on the livin' earth to fix it with, ner money to pay for it. I'll make ol' Poser do that, though. Lemme see your hat, so's I can get an idy or two. You've got some 'commodation, if that blamed millinery-store hain't. Thank ye for the favor."