Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise

"I want one for myself," exclaimed Felicia, suddenly. "Only very small, so's my doll can use it."

"You shall have a dozen if you want them, baby!" cried Dick, lifting her down carefully over the wagon wheel.

The men unhitched and attended to the horses, then followed a short, winding trail up to the lighted doorway. They entered a long, low room, with adobe walls a muddy yellowish color. The floor was of rough plank with a single Navajo blanket of gray and black before a little adobe fireplace. There were half a dozen camp chairs in the room, a couch in a corner, covered with a blue Indian rug, a homemade table in the middle, several pelts and shelves of books in the walls and more books and an alarm clock on the mantel shelf. It was a crude room, but one felt its harmony of tone and homelike quality at once.

"Put your suit cases in here," said Dick, leading the way through an open door into a candle-lighted room. It was a barren little place, but there was a comfortable cot on either side of the room and a packing box between that was half washstand, half bureau. Charley appeared in the door: "Supper'll be ready as soon as the kettle boils," she announced. "Little Felicia is in bed and fast asleep. Dick, you'd better go milk that poor cow."

Dick started off obediently and Ernest sat down on his cot.

"I'll wait till the kettle boils. Gee, I walked a thousand miles. Roger, go out and help with the supper, you lazy brute."

Charley laughed. "There's nothing to do unless you want to start a fire in the fireplace."

Roger followed her to the kitchen, where she pointed to a brimming wood-box. He looked with interest at the immaculate kitchen. The walls were whitewashed, the floor scoured to a silvery purity, the stove was shining.

"What a bully camp you have!" he exclaimed, pausing with his arm full of kindling to look at Charley. For the first time, as she stood watching the teakettle with the lamplight full upon her, he got a clear view of his hostess.

She was slender but not thin. Her shoulders were broad and square and her chest was deep and she was slim-hipped like an athletic boy. She gave Roger a curious impression of strength, very unusual to connect with a girl. Yet for all her height and vigor, she was very lovely. Her hair was darker than Felicia's, a wiry, burnished bronze, in a braided mass about her head. Her face was long, with a well-cut short nose and an oval chin. There were lovely curves in her scarlet, drooping lips. Her eyes were large, a melting brown that was almost black. It was the child Felicia's face, but with a depth of sweetness, a patience and pride in lips and eyes, acquired by what difficulties of living, Roger could not have told, even had he had sufficient understanding of women to have noted the existence of those qualities. He did, however, see her wonderful resemblance to Felicia.