The girl in the doorway was galvanically pretty. Her features were of that striking, contrasty quality that is the result of an artistic makeup—but she was not made up. She was dark, red-lipped, large-eyed, and her figure brought a quick flush of masculine appreciation in the doctor’s face. Physically, it seemed to him, he had never before seen so gloriously all-right a girl. But the desirable physical characteristics which she displayed were not what had caused the cat to get the physician’s tongue. It was the low-neck, sleeveless gown, the sparkling hair ornaments, the gilded slippers and the creaseless silk stockings—all of which had for their background the coal-oil-lighted interior of a log cabin lost in the wilderness—that had wrecked his customary poise.

Her ringing laugh served in a measure to readjust his scattered wits. She had interpreted the meaning of his surprise.

“It’s my birthday!” was the girlish announcement that followed her fun-provoking laugh. “It’s my[10] birthday—and I’m twenty-two—and my name is Charmian Reemy. Mrs. Charmian Reemy, I suppose it is my duty to inform you. Aren’t you coming in, Dr. Shonto?”

[10]

At last the doctor’s hat was in his hand, and Andy Jerome, standing just behind him and equally amazed, removed his too.

Shonto was mumbling something about the unexpected pleasure of meeting a girl in the wilderness who knew his name while Andy followed him inside. The girl hurried on before them and was arranging comfortable thong-bottom chairs before a huge stone fireplace. Skins and bright-coloured Navajo rugs half covered the puncheon floor. Dainty, inexpensive curtains hung at the windows. Deer antlers and enlarged photographs of wildwood scenes broke the solemnity of the dark log walls.

Before the fireplace another woman bent and cooked in a Dutch oven on red coals raked one side from the roaring fire of fir wood.

“This is Mary Temple, my companion, nurse, cook, and adviser in all matters pertaining to my general welfare,” announced the girl. “I love her companionship, appreciate her nursing, rave over her cooking, and ignore her advice entirely. Mary Temple, this is Dr. Inman Shonto, lost in the woods with a friend whom I have not given him time to introduce.”

Once more the bombarded doctor stood by his guns, bowed gravely to middle-aged Mary Temple—who smiled over her lean shoulder but continued to hover her Dutch oven—then turned to Andy.

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