CHAPTER IV
Billy sat motionless on the edge of the bed in their little room in San Jose that night, a musing expression in his eyes.
“Well,” he remarked at last, with a long-drawn breath, “all I've got to say is there's some pretty nice people in this world after all. Take Mrs. Mortimer. Now she's the real goods—regular old American.”
“A fine, educated lady,” Saxon agreed, “and not a bit ashamed to work at farming herself. And she made it go, too.”
“On twenty acres—no, ten; and paid for 'em, an' all improvements, an' supported herself, four hired men, a Swede woman an' daughter, an' her own nephew. It gets me. Ten acres! Why, my father never talked less'n one hundred an' sixty acres. Even your brother Tom still talks in quarter sections.—An' she was only a woman, too. We was lucky in meetin' her.”
“Wasn't it an adventure!” Saxon cried. “That's what comes of traveling. You never know what's going to happen next. It jumped right out at us, just when we were tired and wondering how much farther to San Jose. We weren't expecting it at all. And she didn't treat us as if we were tramping. And that house—so clean and beautiful. You could eat off the floor. I never dreamed of anything so sweet and lovely as the inside of that house.”
“It smelt good,” Billy supplied.
“That's the very thing. It's what the women's pages call atmosphere. I didn't know what they meant before. That house has beautiful, sweet atmosphere—”
“Like all your nice underthings,” said Billy.
“And that's the next step after keeping your body sweet and clean and beautiful. It's to have your house sweet and clean and beautiful.”