The doors and windows had been thrown wide open by Paul's orders.
He wanted to spare Maggie too intimate an acquaintance with a Russian interior.

The hut was really a shooting-box built by Paul some years earlier, and inhabited by a head-keeper, one learned in the ways of bear and wolf and lynx.

The large dwelling-room had been carefully scrubbed.
There was a smell of pine-wood and soap.

The table, ready spread with a simple luncheon, took up nearly the whole of the room.
While the two girls were warming themselves, a keeper came to the door of the hut and asked to see Catrina.

He stood in the little door-way, completely filling it, and explained that he could not come in, as the buckles and straps of his snow-shoes were clogged and frozen.