Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/213

 fireplace of the Ranch of the Pointed Firs. At the left of it, in an old Morris chair, sits Tom, silently and diligently reading. A low willow rocker on the right is occupied by Katharine, also silently and diligently reading. Between the two, upon a black fur rug, still as a shadow, lies Sheila, dreaming of summer-time and the whirr of pheasant wings.

Hours pass. The Morris-chair reader lays his book aside, draws nearer the fire, and, replenishing it, remarks that it must be near midnight. Even as he speaks, the clock chimes eight. Katharine closes her book, seeks the opposite chimney-corner, and there they sit, like a couple of heathen gods carved in wood, solemnly staring into the fire, which, having just swallowed a fresh dose of turpentine and pitch, snaps and crackles so alarmingly that Sheila, suspecting a gun, retires to a distant corner.

Presently the “brazen image” on the left remarks abruptly, “I’m as hungry as a bear; I wish we had some raw oysters!”

“You might as well wish for the apples of Hesperides.”

“Just now I prefer the common ones of Oregon. Where are they? I’ll get some.”

“All gone at the house.”

“Great Scott! Then there isn’t one on the place, and no more to come until next July.”

“And we’re twenty miles from oranges and bananas,