as if for refuge and comfort.

The two girls watched him hungrily as he caught up the smallest of the
group, gave her a playful shake, and chucked her softly into the nest.
They shrilled their thanks and their love, and clamoured to him to
remain; but Derrick wiped them off gently, as one wipes off a bunch of
clinging bees, and promising to look them up as soon as he could,
returned to the horses, which needed him quite as badly as did these
humans.

"He's almost too good to be a man," murmured Alice, involuntarily, as
her gaze followed him wistfully.

Isabel's dark eyes flashed, and her full and sensuous lips curved
contemptuously.

"He's a man, every inch of him," she said. "He's the first man I've ever
met in this god-forsaken world. You--like him, because he's been playing
the nurse to all of us women; you're the sort that always wants some man
to be fussing about you. I'm different. I like to see him when he's
fighting it out with, and mastering, one of the horses, or holding his
own with one of the men-swine who give him trouble sometimes."

"You and I are different," sighed Alice.

"I should hope so," retorted Isabel, scornfully; but the next moment,
with a kind of rough tenderness, she drew the shawl closer round Alice's
shoulders. "Yes, we're different; perhaps that's why I like you. And I
do like you still, though sometimes, when you look up at him with the
eyes of a sick calf, and make excuse to touch him----"

"Oh, don't, Isabel!" murmured Alice, in a low voice. "He--he never
thinks of me."

"You idiot! He never thinks of any of us," breathed Isabel through her
teeth. "That's why he gets such a hold of one; we're just a parcel of
helpless, miserable wretches, who've got on his nerves and forced him to
help us. Do you suppose, if this beastly old tramp went down this
minute, that he'd shed a tear for any of us? Not he!" She paused a
moment; then she said, with a kind of snarl, "He's got his girl. He's
left her behind there, and his heart with her. Oh, don't cry! But, yes,
do; your sort of woman can always find relief in tears. I can't."

An hour later, when Derrick returned to the group with a big can of
soup, he found Alice asleep, with her head pillowed on the bosom of
Isabel.

"Don't wake her," said Derrick.

Instantly Isabel, with a flash of the eyes, pushed the other's girl's
head away from her.

"Here, wake up!" she said, roughly. "You want as much petting as a
baby."

Derrick dealt ou