“That’s him all right,” nodded Perley. “Up here to see the diggings at Greenhide and snowed in same as you.”
Here, Rose, fearing the conversation might turn upon herself, slipped from the doorway into the passage and up the stairs to her own room.
An hour later as she stood before the glass making her toilet for supper, a knock at the door ushered in Cora, already curled, powdered and beribboned for that occasion, a small kerosene lamp in her hand. In the bare room, its gloom only partly dispelled by the light from a similar lamp on the bureau and the red gleam from the stove, Miss Cannon was revealed in the becoming half-dusk made by these imperfectly-blending illuminations, a pink silk dressing-gown loosely enfolding her, a lightly brushed-in suggestion of fair hair behind her ears and on her shoulders. Her comb was in her hand and Cora realized with an uplifting thrill that she had timed her visit correctly and was about to learn the mysteries of Miss Cannon’s coiffure.
“I brung you another lamp,” she said affably, setting her offering down on the bureau. “One ain’t enough light to dress decently by. I have three,” and she sank down on the side of the bed with the air of having established an intimacy, woman to woman, by this act of generous consideration.
“Them gentlemen,” she continued, “are along on this hall with you and your pa. The old one’s Judge Washburne, of Colusa, a pioneer that used to know Mrs. Perley’s mother way back in Sacramento in the fifties, and knew your pa real well when he was poor. It’s sort of encouraging to think your pa was ever poor.”
Rose laughed and turned sidewise, looking at the speaker under the arch of her uplifted arm. There were hair-pins in her mouth and an upwhirled end of blond hair protruded in a gleaming scattering of yellow over her forehead. She mumbled a comment on her father’s early poverty, her lips showing red against the hair-pins nipped between her teeth.
“And the other one,” went on Cora, her eyes riveted on the hair-dressing, her subconscious mind making notes of the disposition of every coil, “his name’s J. D. Buford. And I’d like you to guess what he is! An actor, a stage player. He’s been playing all up the state from Los Angeles and was going down to Sacramento to keep an engagement there. It just tickles me to death to have an actor in the house. I ain’t never seen one close to before.”
The last hair-pin was adjusted and Miss Cannon studied the effect with a hand-glass.
“An actor,” she commented, running a smoothing palm up the back of her head, “that’s just what he looked like, now I think of it. Perhaps he’ll act for us. I think it’s going to be lots of fun being snowed up at Antelope.”
The sound of a voice crying “Cora” here rose from the hallway and that young woman, with a languid deliberation of movement, as of one who obeys a vulgar summons at her own elegant leisure, rose and departed, apologizing for having to go so soon. A few minutes later, the hour of supper being at hand, Rose followed her.