damage to the house or premises she was ready to assert her authority, and she had been on the watch. But they had been careful and orderly and treated her with the proper deference, and in her heart the revolutionary thought had arisen that they were equally considerate and more amusing than the usual run of Gull Island guests. Also they gave her a subject of conversation that would last out the winter. Mrs. Cornell broached her request and Miss Pinkney agreed. She was even very pleasant about it, showing a brisk friendly alacrity—with [Pg 64]the helper gone there’d only be a cold supper and she could dish that up in two shakes. Together they left the kitchen and on the stairs Mrs. Cornell hooked her plump arm inside Miss Pinkney’s bony one and said when Mr. Shine took the flashlights that night he must take one of them as the “feeder” and the other as the “fed.” [Pg 64] [Pg 65] [Pg 65] IV Bassett had gone into the house too. As he crossed the living-room he noticed its deserted quietude, in contrast to the noise and bustle that had possessed it an hour ago. Bassett It was a rich friendly room, comfortably homelike in spite of its size, for it crossed the center of the house, its rear door opening on the garden as the one opposite did on the path. It was spacious in height as well as width, its walls rising two stories. Midway up a gallery ran, on three sides of which the bedrooms opened. The fourth side, on the seaward front, was flanked by a line of windows, great squares of unsullied glass that looked over the garden and the amphitheater to the uplands and the open ocean. There were tables here, raking wicker chairs, and low settees with brilliant cushions, books lying about and [Pg 66]smokers’ materials. In the room below the character of a hunting lodge had been suggested by mounted deer heads, Indian blankets, baskets of cunning weave and animal skins on the floor. But it was an idealized hunting lodge, with seats in which the body sank luxuriously, and softly shaded lights. Round the deep-mouthed chimney the scent of wood fires lingered, the fires of birch logs that leaped there when Gull Island lay under storm and mist. The architect had not diminished the
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