"Like it! That doesn't express it at all. Why, if you'd lived in an abandoned sheep camp for months and prepared your own meals on a broken stove, and eaten them all alone on a bumpy table covered with a piece of oilcloth, and taken your bath in an icy cold creek and then only on the darkest nights for fear someone were watching, and read a few magazines over and over 'til you knew even the advertisements by heart--then suddenly found yourself seated in a room like this, with real china and silver, and comfortable chairs and a _luncheon cloth_--you'd think it was heaven." Patty was aware that the old lady was smiling at her across the table. "If I had lived like that for months, did you say? My dear girl, we lived for years in that little shack--you can see it from where you sit--it's the tool house, now. Mr. Samuelson built it with his own hands when there weren't a half-dozen white men in the hills, and until it was completed we lived in a tepee!" "You've lived here a long time." "Yes, a long, long time. I was the first white woman to come into this part of the hill country to live. This was the first ranch to be established in the hills, but we have a good many neighbors now--and such nice neighbors! One never really appreciates friends and neighbors until a time--like this. Then one begins to know. A long time ago, before I knew, I used to hate this place. Sometimes I used to think I would go crazy, with the loneliness--the vastness of it all. I used to go home and make long visits every year, and then--the children came, and it was different." The woman paused and her eyes strayed to the open window and rested upon the bold headland of a mighty mountain that showed far down the valley. "And--you love it, now?" Patty asked, softly, as she poured French dressing over crisp lettuce leaves.