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 outfit with two big logging camps, my outfit, Jack Fyfe's, some hand loggers on the east shore, and the R.A.T. at the head of the lake. That's the population--and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles long and eight wide." "Are there any nice girls around?" she asked. Benton grinned widely. "Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs and the hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the lake except Lefty Howe's wife,--Lefty's Jack Fyfe's foreman,--and she's fat and past forty. I told you it was a God-forsaken hole as far as society is concerned, Stell." "I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize such a--such a social blankness, until one actually experiences it. Anyway, I don't know but I'll appreciate utter quiet for awhile. But what do you do with yourself when you're not working?"