re
floor; it had been sprinkled from a watering pot earlier in the
afternoon. The room was big and dusky; a few rawhide-bottomed chairs,
a long rough table painted moss-green, some shelves with books,
furnished the apartment. At one end was a fireplace.

Howard tossed his hat to the table and opened a door at one end of the
room. Before them was a hallway; a few steps down were two doors, one
on each hand, heavy old doors of thick slabs of oak, hand-hewn and with
rough iron bands across them, top and bottom, the big nail heads
showing. Howard threw one open, then the other.

'Your rooms,' he said. 'Yours, Miss Helen, opens upon the bath.
You'll have to go down the hall to wash, professor. Make yourselves
free with the whole house. I'll feed the horses and be with you in
three shakes.'

Before his boot heels had done echoing through the living-room it was
an adventure to Helen to peep into her room. She wondered what she was
going to find. Thus far she had had no evidence of a woman upon the
ranch. She knew the sort of housekeeper her father had demonstrated
himself upon occasions when she had been away visiting; she fully
counted upon seeing the traces of a man's hand here. But she was
delightfully surprised. There was a big, old-fashioned walnut bed
neatly made, covered in smooth whiteness by an ironed spread. There
was a washstand with white pitcher like a ptarmigan in the white nest
of a bowl, several towels with red bands towards their ends flanking
it. There was a little rocking-chair, a table with some books. The
window, because of the thickness of the wall, offered an inviting seat
whence one could look into the tangle of roses of the _patio_.

'It is like a dream,' cried Helen. 'A dream come true.'

She glanced into her father's room. It was like hers in its neatness
and appointments, but did not have her charming outlook. She was
turning again into her own room when she heard Howard's voice outside.

'Angela,' he was calling, 'I have brought home friends. You will see
that they have everything. There is a young lady. I am going to the
stable.'

She heard Angela's mumbled answer. So there was, after all, at least
one woman at the ranch. Helen awaited her expectantly, wondering who
and what she might be. Then through her window she saw Angela come
shuffling into the _patio_. She was an old woman, Mexican or Indian,
her hair grey and black in streaks, her body bent over her thumpin