Sometimes he went away with Mrs.
Burke, if she were alone; sometimes with Estelle Clayton, whom Bailey
thought the finest woman in the world. He secretly resented Rivers'
attention to Estelle, for he had come to look upon her as under his
protection. Her coming raised mail-days to the level of a national
holiday.
She scared him, and yet he rejoiced to see her coming down over the sod
so strong, so erect, so clear-eyed. She wore her hair like a matron, and
that pleased him, and she looked at him so frankly and unwaveringly. She
had been a school-teacher in some middle Western State, and had been
swept into this movement by her desire to go to an Eastern college.
Bailey contrived to look very stern and very busy whenever she came in,
but she was wise in ways of men, and treated him as if he were a good
comrade, and so gradually he came to talk to her almost as freely as
with Blanche Burke.
He did not know that Jim almost invariably went over to Burke's
shanty--even when he walked home with Miss Clayton. Rivers did not
impress Estelle favorably.
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