"dress" for the occasion. He had thought her
joking. In spite of him he stared at her wonderingly a moment. And,
despite her own gathering of will, a flush crept into her cheeks under
his look while her own eyes widened to the alterations a little effort
had made in the man. And the thing each noted swiftly of the other was
scarcely less swiftly noted by all men and women in the Settlement
before they had gone down to Joe's: he had suddenly become as handsome
as a devil from hell; she as radiant as an angel.

"Are we just going to step into a ballroom for the masquerade?" she
half whispered with a queer little intake of breath as she found his
arm with a white gloved hand. "And is all this," waving at the
Settlement itself, the river snaking its way through the narrow valley,
the frowning fronts of Ironhead and Indian Peak against the saffron
sky, "just so much painted canvas for the proper background?"

He laughed and brought his eyes away from the white throat and
shoulders, letting them sweep upward to the mystery of her eyes, the
dusky hair half seen, half guessed under the sheen of her scarf,
wondering the while at the strange femininity of her in bringing such
dainty articles of dress to such a land. Then, his eyes finding the
prettily slippered and stockinged feet, he moved with her to the side
of the road where the ground was harder.

Joe had seen with amazing rapidity that the "trimmings" were not
wanting. With old knowledge born of many years of restaurant work, he
knew that any day some prospector might find that which all prospectors
endlessly sought and that then he would grind his bare grubstake
contemptuously under his heel and demand to eat. Upon such occasions
there would be no questions asked as to price if Joe but tickled the
tingling palate. Joe had unlocked the padlock of the cellar trapdoor;
he had gone down and had unlocked another padlock upon a great box.
And all that which he had brought out, beginning with a white
tablecloth and ending with nuts and raisins, had been a revelation to
his boy assistant. There was potted chicken, there were tinned
tomatoes and peaches, there were many things which David Drennen had
not looked upon for the matter of years.

The "private room" into which Joe, even his apron changed for the
occasion, showed them was simply the far end of the long lunch room,
half shut off from the rest of the house by a flimsy partition having
no door, but a wide, hig