Here again was the soft glow of electric lights cunningly concealed
with nowhere a hint of the wires that ran in deeply chiseled grooves;
here was a wide couch, a bit of the woodland, as were the chairs and
table, the rough bark still upon the woodwork, cushions and coverlet of
bearskin; here a smaller table, a smaller chair.
"It's wonderful, you wonderful Wayne!" she cried delightedly.
But he had his arm about her again and was leading her toward the
fireplace, to it, through another door which opened to the passage
leading to the chasm where the water leaped down toward the bowels of
the earth. The door flung open, the passage filled with light and a
fresh surprise.
Across the chasm were logs as large as one man could handle, hewn so
that they lay close together, so that their upper surface made a level
floor. Wanda and Shandon crossed, hearing the water shouting under
them. And here, where Wanda had never been before, they came upon--
"The kitchen!" she cried. "A real kitchen!"
With a real stove, only that it was made of slabs and squares of
granite, a real kitchen table only that it was made from rough pine and
cedar, with the bark still on it; and very real dishes. Most of all
the real fragrance of coffee just boiling over. Wanda ran to retrieve
it and Wayne went on ahead of her. In a moment he called.
All new to her, the short climb upward along a flight of steps cut in
the rock, the little winding way up which she ran eagerly, the narrow
rock platform, the door against which he stood.
"First," he commanded gaily, "turn and look back."
She turned. Looking down she saw the kitchen; looking outward she saw
a great cut through the cliffs where they seemed to fall apart in a
steep sided ravine, and through this she looked out and down over her
forests.
"The view from My Lady's bedroom," he laughed. "And now My Lady's
bedroom, itself."
He threw open the door, standing aside to watch her pass.
A tiny rudely squared chamber, all in white. Countless warm, furry
pelts of the snowshoe rabbits he had trapped during the winter, made a
white carpet underfoot; a couch unlike the other in that this was
fashioned entirely of white pine, the smooth surfaces polished and
glistening under their many coats of shellac, a coverlet of countless
other white rabbit skins stitched together; a little dressing table of
glistening white pine, with a real mirror reflecting two flushed happy
faces, and on the floor a big white bearskin.
"And you did it all, every bit, yourself!"
That was the thought that flooded the caves for her with a light more
softly radiant than the glow of innumerable electric bulbs; the thought
which hid the little flaws in stone and woodwork and gave a gleam to
them that no mere shellac and white wood could have done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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