would have caused a snicker among the men if they had overheard him.
He did not mind Dill following him out, nor did he greatly mind the
Pilgrim remaining in the house with Miss Bridger. The relief of being
even temporarily free from the perplexities of the situation mastered
all else and sent him whistling down the path to the stables.

CHAPTER XIV.

_A Winter at the Double-Crank_.

There are times when, although the months as they pass seem full,
nothing that has occurred serves to mark a step forward or back in the
destiny of man. After a year, those months of petty detail might be
wiped out entirely without changing the general trend of events--and
such a time was the winter that saw "Dill and Bill," as one
alliterative mind called them, in possession of the Double-Crank. The
affairs of the ranch moved smoothly along toward a more systematic
running than had been employed under Brown's ownership. Dill settled
more and more into the new life, so that he was so longer looked upon
as a foreign element; he could discuss practical ranch business and be
sure of his ground--and it was then that Billy realized more fully how
shrewd a brain lay behind those mild, melancholy blue eyes, and how
much a part of the man was that integrity which could not stoop to
small meanness or deceit. It would have been satisfying merely to know
that such a man lived, and if Billy had needed any one to point
the way to square living he must certainly have been better for the
companionship of Dill.

As to Miss Bridger, he stood upon much the same footing with her as he
had in the fall, except that he called her Flora, in the familiarity
which comes of daily association; to his secret discomfort she had
fulfilled her own prophecy and called him Billy Boy. Though he liked
the familiarity, he emphatically did not like the mental attitude
which permitted her to fall so easily into the habit of calling him
that. Also, he was in two minds about the way she would come to the
door of the living room and say: "Come, Billy Boy, and dry the dishes
for me--that's a good kid!"

Billy had no objections to drying the dishes; of a truth, although
that had been a duty which he shirked systematically in line-camps
until everything in the cabin was in that state which compels action,
he would have been willing to stand beside Flora Bridger at the sink
and wipe dishes (and watch her bare, white arms, with the dimply
elbows) from dark until dawn. Wh