They blazed like
a torch. Books! Along the four walls, books. Fat,
comfortable, used-looking books. Hundreds of them. A lamp
on the table, and beside it a pipe, blackened from much use.
Fanny picked it up, smiling. She held it a moment in her
hand, as though she expected to find it still warm.
"It's like one of the fairy tales," she thought, "the kind
that repeats and repeats. The kind that says, `and she went
into the next room, and it was as the good fairy had said.'"
There's tinned stuff in the pantry. She went into the tiny
kitchen and opened the pantry door cautiously,
being wary of mice. But it met her eye in spotless
array. Orderly rows of tins. Orderly rows of bottles.
Coffee. Condensed milk. Beans. Spaghetti. Flour.
Peaches. Pears.
Off the bedroom there was an absurdly adequate little
bathroom, with a zinc tub and an elaborate water-heating
arrangement.
Fanny threw back her head and laughed as she hadn't laughed
in months. "Wild life in the Rockies," she said aloud. She
went back to the book-lined living room.
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