“This is my room.  Here, Mary lets me have my way,” said Jasper Ewold.  “And it is not expensive.”

“The Japanese idea of concentration,” said Jack.

Jasper Ewold, who had been watching the effect of the room on Jack, as he watched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that this young man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps and trails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyed combatancy of the born controversialist.

“Japanese?  No!” he declared.  “The little men with their storks and vases have merely discovered to us in decoration a principle which was Greek in a more majestic world than theirs.  It was the true instinct of the classic motherhood of our art before collectors mistook their residences for warehouses.”

“And the books?” Jack asked, boyishly.  “Where are they?  Yes, what do you do with all the second-class matter?”

The question was bait to Jasper Ewold.  It gave him an opportunity for discourse.

“When I read I want nothing but a paper-cutter close at hand—­a good, big paper-cutter, whose own weight carries it through the leaves.  And I want to be alone with that book.  If I am too lazy to go to the library for another, then it is not worth reading.  When I get head-achy with print and look up, I don’t want to stare at the backs of more books.  I want something to rest and fill the eye.  I—­”

“Father,” Mary admonished him, “I fear this is going to be long.  Why not continue after Mr. Wingfield has washed off the dust of travel and we are at table?”

“Mary is merely jealous.  She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, which was designed to her taste,” answered her father, with an affectation of grand indignation.  “The dust of travel here is clean desert dust—­but I admit that it is gritty.  Come with me, Sir Chaps!”

He bade Jack precede him through a door diagonally opposite the one by which he had entered from the veranda.  On the other side Jack found himself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram around a great deal table littered with magazines and papers.  Here, indeed, the printed word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos of that truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity.  Out of the library Jack passed into Jasper Ewold’s bedroom.  It was small, with a soldier’s cot of exaggerated size that must have been built for his amplitude of person, and it was bare of ornament except for an old ivory crucifix.

“There’s a pitcher and basin, if you incline to a limited operation for outward convention,” said Jasper Ewold; “and through that door you will find a shower, if you are for frank, unlimited submersion of the altogether.”

“Have I time for the altogether?” Jack asked.

“When youth has not in this house, it marks a retrocession toward barbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate.  Take your shower, Sir Chaps, and”—­a smile went weaving over the hills and valleys of Jasper Ewold’s face—­“and, mind, you take off those grand boots or they will get full of water!  You will find me in the library when you are through;” and, shaking with subterranean enjoyment of his own joke, he closed the door.