Patty looked hungrily at the porcelain tub—"A real bathroom!" she breathed, "out here in the mountains—and books, and a piano!"
Mrs. Samuelson awaited her at the foot of the stair and led the way to the dining room. When she was seated at the round mahogany table she smiled across at the old lady in frank appreciation.
"It seems like stepping right into fairyland," she said. "Like the old stories when the heroes and heroines rubbed magic lamps, or stepped onto enchanted carpets and were immediately transported from their miserable hovels to castles of gold inhabited by beautiful princes and princesses."
The old lady's eyes beamed: "I'm glad you like it!"
"Like it! That doesn't express it at all. Why, if you'd lived in an abandoned sheep camp for months and prepared your own meals on a broken stove, and eaten them all alone on a bumpy table covered with a piece of oilcloth, and taken your bath in an icy cold creek and then only on the darkest nights for fear someone were watching, and read a few magazines over and over 'til you knew even the advertisements by heart—then suddenly found yourself seated in a room like this, with real china and silver, and comfortable chairs and a luncheon cloth—you'd think it was heaven."
Patty was aware that the old lady was smiling at her across the table. "If I had lived like that for months, did you say? My dear girl, we lived for years in that little shack—you can see it from where you sit—it's the tool house, now. Mr. Samuelson built it with his own hands when there weren't a half-dozen white men in the hills, and until it was completed we lived in a tepee!"
"You've lived here a long time."
"Yes, a long, long time. I was the first white woman to come into this part of the hill country to live. This was the first ranch to be established in the hills, but we have a good many neighbors now—and such nice neighbors! One never really appreciates friends and neighbors until a time—like this. Then one begins to know. A long time ago, before I knew, I used to hate this place. Sometimes I used to think I would go crazy, with the loneliness—the vastness of it all. I used to go home and make long visits every year, and then—the children came, and it was different." The woman paused and her eyes strayed to the open window and rested upon the bold headland of a mighty mountain that showed far down the valley.
"And—you love it, now?" Patty asked, softly, as she poured French dressing over crisp lettuce leaves.
"Yes—I love it, now. After the children came it was all different. I never want to leave the valley, now. I never shall leave it. I am an old woman, and my world has narrowed down to my home, and my valley—my husband, and my friends and neighbors." She looked up guiltily, with a tiny little laugh. "Do you know, during those first years I must have been an awful fool. I used to loathe it all—loathe the country—the men, who ate in their shirt sleeves and blew into their saucers, and their women. It was the uprising that brought me to a realization of the true worth of these people—" The little woman's voice trailed off into silence, and Patty glanced up from her salad to see that the old eyes were once more upon the far blue headland, and the woman's thoughts were evidently very far away. She came back to the present with an apology: "Why bless you, child, forgive me! My old wits were back-trailing, as the cowboys would say. You have finished your salad, come, let's go out onto the porch, where we can get the afternoon breeze and be comfortable." She led the way through the living-room where she left the girl for a moment, to tiptoe upstairs for a peep at the sick man. "He's asleep," she reported, as they stepped out onto the porch and settled themselves in comfortable wicker rockers.