The Poet’s Corner

The little pine house had only two rooms, one a small bed-room, the other serving as kitchen, dining-room and living-room. As there was no furnace and a wood fire would afford insufficient heat, an old-fashioned stove extended its stove pipe up the fireplace chimney.

This stove, packed tight with small chunks of wood, was now red hot and on top a kettle was pouring forth a thin stream of steam.

Allan Drain kneeled down.

“You’ll allow me to take off your snowshoes so you can be more comfortable? I envy you your skill in being able to manage them as I have been struggling for several weeks without success. Please don’t mind the small amount of snow you have brought into the room. I am not a particular housekeeper.”

Gill glanced about the room.
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“I am not so sure. It seems to me you have arranged your room in a satisfactory and at the same time a picturesque fashion.”

“Oh, my belongings are few and simple after the grandeur of your cabin. I only brought a bed and a table and a chair and some books along with me. Since, I have been lucky enough to get hold of a few possessions left behind in the North woods by fellows who once were in pretty much the same fix I am. I have made the rest of the furniture myself from the wood I bought at a lumber camp not far off. See that book shelf to the left of the mantle; it was given me by a backwoods preacher, an old man who says it once belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson. You know Stevenson spent a winter in the Adirondacks for his health, don’t you? He and my old woodsman, who was a young fellow then, became friends.”

Gill nodded, but not so impressed as her companion had expected and hoped.
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“Yes, I heard Mrs. Burton and Bettina Graham talking of the famous men and women who have lived in the Adirondack forests. Besides Stevenson there was a ‘Philosopher’s Camp’ with Emerson and James Russell Lowell and Professor Agassiz as members. Perhaps they may be an inspiration to you, but I cannot say I feel any deep interest. I told you I was not in the least literary and that I cared for the outdoors and not for books.”

Whether or not she intended this, there was a slightly contemptuous note in the girl’s voice.

Her companion, having removed her snowshoes, rose quickly with his face slightly flushed.

“You’ll have a cup of tea with me. The water is boiling so I can have it ready in a few minutes. It will warm you after your walk.”

As Gill nodded acquiescence, quickly and deftly as a girl Allan Drain set about his preparations.

His tea service consisted of a brown earthenware teapot, two cups and saucers, a cheap little pitcher and a silver sugar bowl of rare beauty, evidently an heirloom.

He had placed on the table a pot of gooseberry jam and now undertook to make the toast by opening his stove door and toasting the bread at the end of a long fork.
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Offering no assistance, Gill sat watching, glancing sometimes at her host and as often at his surroundings.

Truly he had revealed ingenuity and taste in his arrangements, in spite of the scarcity and poverty of his furnishings. In the first place, the room was clean, the floor swept, the books and furniture dusted. On the walls were several unframed sketches and photographs made by amateur artists, pictures of the North woods in summer or autumn beauty. Fastened alongside were the skins of a raccoon and a beaver; on the floor, although somewhat the worse for wear, a large bearskin rug. There were two chairs and a table of crude but not ugly workmanship. Gill discovered herself enthroned in the solitary chair her host had brought with him for his lonely winter in the forest.

“I should think you would have preferred to be at a hotel or a hospital for the winter if you are not well,” she volunteered a few moments later when her host had placed her chair in front of one of his tables where his little feast was spread.
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In spite of the fact that she was enjoying her tea, Gill found conversation difficult with an individual whose tastes and point of view were so unlike her own.

“I should think you would be desperately lonely here; you see it is different with us, there are so many of us and we are accustomed to being together.”

As Allan Dr............