As for Betsy, she preferred the seclusion from the sight of the six horses so dexterously tooled along the road, and felt that she saw all the scenery she cared for despite the roof of the stage. Miss Foster must have had an excellent conscience; she always accepted with such contentment her own society.
There was a chatter of voices in her ears from the other occupants of the stage, but her eyes rested absently on hillside and waterfall while she thought of Fairport and the deserted cottage whose condition was still far from satisfying her. Her thoughts roved, too, as they often did, to Rosalie Vincent. What was the girl doing, out in the world unprotected?
It seemed but a short time to Betsy before the coach swung around the circle in front of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, and the passengers poured from the vehicle, watched by other crowds on the hotel piazza, who half resented the arrival of newcomers, for at this season food and beds were at a premium.
Irving had looked out for the comfort of his party, and Mrs. Bruce’s room satisfied her. They spent the day in the customary visits to beautiful terraces of heavenly tints built by boiling-hot scanty waterfalls, and at night laid them down to slumber well contented.
In a remote room of the hotel a young girl, after her evening’s experience of standing upon her feet long hours, waiting upon hungry hordes of sightseers, was hastening to get ready for her night’s rest, when the handle of her door was turned, and then as if some one outside was impatient of its resistance, it was shaken with energy.
The half-disrobed occupant of the room ran to hold the door.
“Who’s there?” she demanded.
A sharp girlish voice replied imperatively, “It’s me! Open the door quick!”
“You’ve made a mistake in the room,” returned the girl inside. “This is mine.”
“Is it, indeed!” shrilly. “Well, I guess if you don’t open this door pretty quick, I’ll have you sent flying!”
At which threat in the sharp voice, the girl inside opened the door and viewed in astonishment the stormy-eyed young person who entered, beginning to pull out hairpins from her lofty pompadour as she came. “What did you think you were? A lay-over?” she demanded scornfully.
The other girl, her fair hair falling in ripples about her bare neck and arms, closed the door and regarded the newcomer with wide eyes.
“Is it your room, too?” she asked.
“Yes, it is,” snapped the other, “and I hope it won’t be any more disagreeable for you than it is for me.”
“Oh – oh – of course not,” returned the fair one. “I only thought it was so small – and the bed is so narrow – and I didn’t know – ”
“Well,” returned the other, somewhat mollified, and with a yawn, “I saw down in the dining-room to-night that you were a green-horn. We’re mighty lucky not to be in a bigger room with half-a-dozen girls. My name’s Miss Hickey. What’s yours?”
“Rosalie Vincent,” responded the fair one, still standing rooted to her place while Miss Hickey removed a mammoth rat from her hair, and eclipsed with it one side of the wash-stand, which was dresser as well.
“Better get to bed, Miss Vincent. You’ll have plenty of chances to stare at me, and you look as tired as I feel. I stayed down to help the pearl-divers awhile to-night.”
“Pearl-divers?” echoed Rosalie.
“Yes. Dish-washers, Greenie. I’m a heaver like yourself; but we all have to turn in and help each other, once in a while. This is my third season. My first I waited on the sagebrushers.”
“Who are they?” asked Rosalie, overawed by so much sophistication.
“Campers; but I like the hotels best. The dudes are more my style.”
“What did you call me a few minutes ago? A lay-over?” asked Rosalie.
“Yes, those are the swells that stay more than one night. They’re the princes of the Yellowstone and they have to pay like princes, too. All their dishes washed separately, separate food, separate everything. I thought you must think you were one to have a room all to yourself.”
Miss Hickey here completed her hasty night-toilet and jumped into bed. “Come along, child. I’ll make myself small against the wall.”
“Indeed, I’m not a lay-over,” said Rosalie, now hastening to follow the other’s example. “I’m to be sent on with the crowd to-morrow.”
“So am I,” returned the other, with nasal sleepiness; “and I’m darned sorry, too. I like the swatties here better than at any post.”
“Swatties?” echoed Rosalie helplessly.
“Soldiers, Greenie,” drawled Miss Hickey. “You’ll see a lot more of ’em before you see less. Now I ain’t goin’ to say another word to-night.”
And Miss Hickey kept her word. Her sleep was as energetic as her waking; and Rosalie listened to her heavy breathing and stared wide-eyed into the darkness.
She had recognized the Bruce party at the evening meal. She had not been obliged to wait on them, and knew herself unobserved. But the discovery had excited her very much. Mrs. Bruce had been right when she said that Rosalie’s was the artistic temperament. The independence, caution, and reserve of the New Englander were not her characteristics. She longed for companionship and some one with whom to sympathize in the present predicament; for predicament she felt it to be. How extraordinary that this should be the summer chosen by the Bruces for their visit to the National Park.
She thought of the irreverent punctuation which made a well-known quotation read: “There is a divinity which shapes our ends rough, hew them as we may.”
She had believed Mrs. Bruce to be in Europe, and though that lady’s natural preoccupation there explained the ignoring of her protégée’s painstaking letters, it did not excuse it, or leave Rosalie the slightest hope that her benefactress continued to feel an interest in her. The fact was a hurt to the grateful girl, and the ever-present consciousness of it gave her a reason for desiring to leave Fairport, where the Bruces would return. This sensitiveness would not have induced her to leave Mrs. Pogram, had the latter’s brother not made her stay unendurable, but it was a secret reason for being glad to escape.
Perhaps Mrs. Bruce and her son would not remember her at all; but she could not expect to escape Betsy Foster’s recognition. So she lay there awake; at one moment longing for Mrs. Pogram’s kindly, invertebrate protection, and wishing that Mrs. Bruce had never opened to her another world; and again feeling the fire of ambition to repay that lady every cent she had ever spent upon her. Rosalie’s color pressed high as she imagined Mrs. Bruce’s amazed scorn that the talents in which she had at least for a time believed, had carried their possessor no higher as yet than to be a waitress – a heaver, according to Miss Hickey – in the Yellowstone.
The girl must at last have dozed; for she shortly experienced a vigorous shaking from her companion.
“Here, here, hustle!” exclaimed Miss Hickey, not unkindly. Rosalie opened her eyes with such bewilderment that her companion laughed.
“Come on, blue eyes. You look like a baby. Get into your duds. We’re off for Norris Basin, worse luck.”
The sight of Miss Hickey’s readjusted pompadour gave Rosalie a realizing sense of the situation.
“Oh, Miss Hickey,” she exclaimed, as she hurried to the washstand, “are many people lay-overs?”
“Oh, you’ve got them on the brain, have you?” asked the other, proceeding with her own toilet. “Not many, ’cause it costs too much.”
“I saw some people here last night who have lots of money – oh, lots and lots! Shouldn’t you think they’d stay?”
“H’m. I only hope they will,” rejoined Miss Hickey, “as long as we’re going. The crowds are fierce.”
“I