At six o’clock Bob received his guests in a room that went across the wooden house. Helen Maxwell, looking about with some curiosity, noted the big fireplace, built for burning logs, for on the Pacific Coast the cold snaps are short. The walls were plain, dressed lumber, marked by resinous cracks, the roughly boarded floor was torn by nailed boots, and the long table was made by a bush carpenter. For all that, the room was homelike and Helen rather approved its austere simplicity. Perhaps it was strange, but she thought the piano in a corner and the two or three good pictures did not jar.
Outside the hired men joked and laughed. The splash of water indicated that they washed, and Helen had remarked the row of tin basins on a board. The windows commanded a noble view of the lake and woods.
