"Oh, how fine!"
He had thrown the door back and stood aside for her to enter. Light came into the room from three windows and before the gentle breeze white curtains billowed inward. Navajo blankets covered the floor. The bed, in one corner, was spread with a gay serape and beside it was a bookcase with shelves well filled. In the center of the room stood a table and on it a reading lamp. About the walls were pictures, few in number but interesting.
At Ann's exclamation Bruce smiled broadly, pleased.
"I'm glad you like it," he said. "I do. I thought maybe you would."
"Why, it's splendid!" she cried again. "It doesn't look like a room in the house of a bachelor rancher. It doesn't look like...."
She stopped and looked up at him, puzzled, questioning so eloquently with her gaze that it was unnecessary for him to await the spoken query.
"Yes, I did it myself," he said with a flushed laugh. Their self-consciousness was relieved by the change of thought. "It's mine; all mine. You ... You're the first person to come in here, ma'am, except Tim.... He was my daddy, an' he's dead. I don't ask folks in here 'cause it's so much trouble to explain to most of 'em. They'd think I'm stuck up, with lace curtains an' all...."
He waved his hands to include the setting.
"I can live with th' roughest of 'em an' enjoy it; I can put up with anything when it's necessary, but somehow I've always wanted something different, something that'll fill a place that plenty of grub an' a hot stove don't always satisfy.
"Them curtains,"—with a chuckle—"came from th' Manzanita House. They were th' first decorations I put up. I woke up one mornin' after I'd been ... well, relieving my youth a little. I was in one of th' hotel rooms. 'Twas about this time of year an' th' wind was soft an' gentle, blowin' through th' windows like it does now, an' them curtains looked so cool an' clean an' homelike that I... Well, I just rustled three pair, ma'am!"