I found myself in a small, front room, neatly but plainly furnished. The floor was varnished and two bearskin rugs supplied the only carpeting. It had a mahogany centre table, on which a large oil-burning reading lamp was set. Three wicker chairs, designed solely for comfort, and a stove with an open front helped to complete its comfortable appearance. A number of framed photographs of Golden Crescent and some water colour paintings decorated the plain, wooden walls. In the far corner, beside a small side window, there stood a writing desk; while, all along that side of the wall, on a long curtain pole, there was hung, from brass rings, a heavy green curtain.
I took in what I could in a cursory glance and I marvelled that there could be so much apparent concentrated comfort so far away from city civilisation; but, when my guide pulled aside the curtain on the wall and disclosed rows and rows of books behind a glass front, books ancient and modern, books of religion, philosophy, medicine, history, fiction and poetry,—at least a thousand of them,—I gave up trying any more to fathom what manner of a man he was.
My eyes sparkled and explained to K. B. Horsfal what my voice failed to utter.
"Well,—what d'ye think of it all?" he asked at last.
"It is a delight,—a positive delight," I replied simply.
As I walked over to the front window, I wondered little that Mrs. Horsfal should have loved the place; and, when I looked away out over the dancing waters, upon the beauties of the bay in the changing light of the lowering sun, upon the rocky, fir-dotted island a mile to sea, and upon the lonely-looking homes of the settlers over there two miles away on the far horn of Golden Crescent, with the great background of mountains in purple velvet,—I wondered less.
"Yes! George,—it's pretty near what heaven should be to look at. But I guess it's the same old story that the poet once sang:
"'Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.'
"That poet kind of forgot that, if what he said was true, it was only the vile man that the prospect could please, eh!
"You notice the house has been cleaned from top to toe. I had that done last week. I see to that every time I come west."