ore than a
handful for his family before he was half through college, which
educational finishing process had come to an abrupt stop before it was
complete. He had been a problem that her father and mother had discussed
in guarded tones. Sending him West had been a hopeful experiment, and in
the West that abounding spirit which manifested itself in one continual
round of minor escapades appeared to have found a natural outlet. She
recalled that latterly their father had taken to speaking of Charlie in
accents of pride. He was developing the one ambition that Benton senior
could thoroughly understand and properly appreciate, the desire to get
on, to grasp opportunities, to achieve material success, to make money.

Just as her father, on the few occasions when he talked business before
her, spoke in a big way of big things as the desirable ultimate, so now
Charlie spoke, with plans and outlook to match his speech. In her
father's point of view, and in Charlie's now, a man's personal life did
not seem to matter in comparison with getting on and making money. And
it was with that personal side of existence that Stella Benton was now
chiefly concerned. She had never been required to adjust herself to an
existence that was wholly taken up with getting on to the complete
exclusion of everything else. Her work had been to play. She could
scarce conceive of any one entirely excluding pleasure and diversion
from his or her life. She wondered if Charlie had done so. And if not,
what ameliorating circumstances, what social outlet, might be found to
offset, for her, continued existence in this isolated region of towering
woods. So far as her first impressions went, Roaring Lake appeared to be
mostly frequented by lumberjacks addicted to rude speech and strong
drink.

"Are there many people living around this lake?" she inquired. "It is
surely a beautiful spot. If we had this at home, there would be a summer
cottage on every hundred yards of shore."

"Be a long time before we get to that stage here," Benton returned. "And
scenery in B.C. is a drug on the market; we've got Europe backed off the
map for tourist attractions, if they only knew it. No, about the only
summer home in this locality is the Abbey place at Cottonwood Point.
They come up here every summer for two or three months. Otherwise I
don't know of any lilies of the field, barring the hotel people, and
they, being purely transient, don't count. There's the Abbey-Monohan