But that made no more than a passing impression upon her.  She was thinking, as she removed her hat and gloves, of what queer angles come now and then to the human mind.  She wondered why she should be sufficiently interested in her brother’s hired men to drive off a compelling attack of the blues in consideration of them as men.  Nevertheless, she found herself unable to view them as she had viewed, say, the clerks in her father’s office.

She began to brush her hair and to wonder what sort of food would be served for supper.

CHAPTER IV

A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME

Half an hour later she sat down with her brother at one end of a table that was but a long bench covered with oilcloth.  Chairs there were none.  A narrow movable bench on each side of the fixed table furnished seating capacity for twenty men, provided none objected to an occasional nudging from his neighbor’s elbow.  The dishes, different from any she had ever eaten from, were of enormously thick porcelain, dead white, variously chipped and cracked with fine seams.  But the food, if plain, was of excellent quality, tastily cooked.  She discovered herself with an appetite wholly independent of silver and cut glass and linen.  The tin spoons and steel knives and forks harrowed her aesthetic sense without impairing her ability to satisfy hunger.

They had the dining room to themselves.  Through a single shiplap partition rose a rumble of masculine talk, where the logging crew loafed in their bunkhouse.  The cook served them without any ceremony, putting everything on the table at once,—­soup, meat, vegetables, a bread pudding for dessert, coffee in a tall tin pot.  Benton introduced him to his sister.  He withdrew hastily to the kitchen, and they saw no more of him.

“Charlie,” the girl said plaintively, when the man had closed the door behind him, “I don’t quite fathom your social customs out here.  Is one supposed to know everybody that one encounters?”

“Just about,” he grinned.  “Loggers, Siwashes, and the natives in general.  Can’t very well help it, Sis.  There’s so few people in this neck of the woods that nobody can afford to be exclusive,—­at least, nobody who lives here any length of time.  You can’t tell when you may have to call on your neighbor or the fellow working for you in a matter of life and death almost.  A man couldn’t possibly maintain the same attitude toward a bunch of loggers working under him that would be considered proper back where we came from.  Take me, for instance, and my case is no different from any man operating on a moderate scale out here.  I’d get the reputation of being swell-headed, and they’d put me in the hole at every turn.  They wouldn’t care what they did or how it was done.  Ten to one I couldn’t keep a capable working crew three weeks on end.  On the other hand, take a bunch of loggers on a pay roll working for a man that meets