uched the upturned pages to the
whiteness of snow. A sudden wind had sprung up, and the flaring blaze
from the open stove-door touched to vivid distinctness the giant, the
old man and the Indian. Brick closed the stove-door, and the sudden
gloom brought out in mellow effect Wilfred's animated face, the dull
yellow wall against which his sturdy shoulder rested, and the letter in
his hand.

CHAPTER XIV

WRITING HOME

"Dear Brick and Bill:

"I don't know what to tell first. It's all so strange and grand--the
people are just people, but the things are wonderful. The people want
it to be so; they act, and think according to the things around them.
They pride themselves on these things and on being amongst them, and I
am trying to learn to do that, too. When I lived in the cove--it seems
a long, long time ago--my thoughts were always away from dirt-floors
and cook-stoves and cedar logs and wash-pans. But the people in the
big world keep their minds tied right up to such things--only the
things are finer--they are marble floors and magnificent restaurants
and houses on what they call the 'best streets.' At meals, there are
all kinds of little spoons and forks, and they think to use a wrong one
is something dreadful; that is why I say the forks and spoons seem more
important than THEY are, but they want it to be so.

"They have certain ways of doing everything, and just certain times for
doing them, and if you do a wrong thing at a right time, or a right
thing at a wrong time, it shows you are from the West. At first, I
couldn't say a word, or turn around, without showing that I was from
the West. But although I've been from home only a few days, I'm
getting so that nobody can tell that I'm more important than the
furniture around me. I'm trying to be just like the one I'm with, and
I don't believe an outsider can tell that I have any more sense than
the rest of them.

"Miss Sellimer is so nice to me. I told her right at the start that I
didn't know anything about the big world, and she teaches me
everything. I'd be more comfortable if she could forget about my
saving her life, but she never can, and is so grateful it makes me feel
that I'm enjoying all this on false pretenses for you know my finding
her was only an accident. Her mother is very pleasant to me--much more
so than to her. Bill, you know how you speak to your horse, sometimes,
when it acts contrary? That's the way Miss Sellimer speaks to h