"All right. Breakfast will be ready soon, and after that we'll
look about the place."

Madeline was charmed with the old Spanish house, and the more she
saw of it the more she thought what a delightful home it could be
made. All the doors opened into a courtyard, or patio, as
Florence called it. The house was low, in the shape of a
rectangle, and so immense in size that Madeline wondered if it
had been a Spanish barracks. Many of the rooms were dark,
without windows, and they were empty. Others were full of
ranchers' implements and sacks of grain and bales of hay.
Florence called these last alfalfa. The house itself appeared
strong and well preserved, and it was very picturesque. But in
the living-rooms were only the barest necessities, and these were
worn out and comfortless.

However, when Madeline went outdoors she forgot the cheerless,
bare interior. Florence led the way out on a porch and waved a
hand at a vast, colored void. "That's what Bill likes," she
said.

At first Madeline could not tell what was sky and what was land.
The immensity of the scene stunned her faculties of conception.
She sat down in one of the old rocking-chairs and looked and
looked, and knew that she was not grasping the reality of what
stretched wondrously before her.

"We're up at the edge of the foothills," Florence said. "You
remember we rode around the northern end of the mountain range?
Well, that's behind us now, and you look down across the line