Then, without another word, he turned away, and walked out of the saloon.
CHAPTER XV
ADVENTURES IN THE NIGHT
Big Brother Bill changed his mind after all. He did not go to O’Brien’s saloon. At least not when he left the Seton’s house. Truth to tell, his unanticipated visit to Helen Seton’s home had inspired him with a distaste for exploring the less savory corners of this beautiful valley. For the time, at least, it had become a sort of Garden of Eden, in which he had discovered his Eve, and he had no desire to dispel the illusion by unnecessary contact with a grade of creatures whose existence therein could only mar the beauties and delights of his dream.
So, instead of carrying out his original intention, full of pleasant dreaming, he made his way back toward his brother’s home, hoping to find him returned so that he could pour out his enthusiastic feelings for the benefit of ears he felt would be sympathetic.
As he came to the clearing where he had first discovered Helen, however, his purpose underwent a further modification. His sentimental feelings getting the better of him, he sat down upon the very log over which the girl had fallen, and turned his face toward where the little home of the girls, with its single twinkling light, was rapidly losing itself in the deep of the gathering twilight.
He had no thought for the elder girl as he sat there. Her bolder beauty had no attraction for him, her big, dark eyes, so full of reliant spirit were scarcely the type he admired. She might be everything a woman should be, strong, sympathetic, generous, big in spirit, and of unusual courage; she might be all these and more, but, even so, she was incomparable to the fair delight of Helen’s bright, inconsequent prettiness. No, serious-minded people did not appeal to him, and, in his blundering way, he told himself that life itself was far too serious to be taken seriously.
Now Helen was full to the brim of a flippant, girlish humor that appealed to him monstrously. He felt that it was a man’s place to think seriously, if serious thought were needed. And he intended when he married to do the thinking. His wife must be wholly delightful and feminine, in fact, just as Helen was. Pretty, laughing, smartly dressed, and always preferring to lean on his decisions rather than indulge in the manufacture of wrinkles on her pretty forehead striving to find them for herself.