“Is the strike going to last long?” Beatrice asked.
“It’s not a strike; that’s just where the pinch is. While they were holding their meeting last night, and arguing about how soon they should quit, there comes word from the company that the work is shut down until further notice. Something has gone wrong with the money end of the business, people say, and there’s nothing to go on with. Anyway, there’s no strike; the men higher up beat them to it. Christina is right. The City of Ely is no place for young ladies to be going just now.”
He carried in the boxes and went down the path for more.
“There’s room in the shed for your horse, Miss Beatrice,” he announced, when he had made his last trip. “I can bring him up if you like, only you would have to take care of him yourself. We can haul up enough feed to keep him, and there’s some grazing land higher up the hill.”
Accordingly it was settled that Buck, also, was to be a part of their establishment, although Beatrice felt a little appalled at the prospect of taking care of a horse single-handed.
“Bless you, he’s that wise he can almost take care of himself,” Sam reassured her. “He’s a little light on his feet when you go to saddle him, but beyond that he hasn’t a fault. It will be a good thing to have a horse on the place.”
Toward noon the two girls, with Christina’s assistance, began to bring some order out of the confusion. The cabin possessed four rooms downstairs; the large living-room, into which the front door opened; the bedroom off it; the lean-to kitchen; and, wonder of wonders, a tiny bath-room with a shining white porcelain tub.
“Those engineers who used the place just settled down to make themselves comfortable,” Christina explained. “They put in the water-pipes themselves, and I’ll never forget the day they brought up that tub, packed on a mule. He bucked it off once and it slid down the hill until it caught between two pine-trees.”
The enterprising former tenants had also introduced electricity from the power plant of the nearest mine, so that the two most difficult housekeeping problems of water and light were thus already solved. The heavy table and straight clumsy chairs must also have been brought there by their predecessors, and the bunks in the two little rooms under the roof must have been their work. The men had evidently slept on pine branches; but for the girls Sam brought mattresses from the house in the village and a comfortable bed for Aunt Anna.