The Circular Staircase

I missed the summers with them when, somewhat later, at boarding-school

and college, the children spent much of their vacations with friends.

Gradually I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome

than when signed to a letter, though I wrote them at stated intervals.

But when Halsey had finished his electrical course and Gertrude her

boarding-school, and both came home to stay, things were suddenly

changed. The winter Gertrude came out was nothing but a succession of

sitting up late at night to bring her home from things, taking her to

the dressmakers between naps the next day, and discouraging ineligible

youths with either more money than brains, or more brains than money.

Also, I acquired a great many things: to say lingerie for

under-garments, "frocks" and "gowns" instead of dresses, and that

beardless sophomores are not college boys, but college men. Halsey

required less personal supervision, and as they both got their mother's

fortune that winter, my responsibility became purely moral. Halsey

bought a car, of course, and I learned how to tie over my bonnet a gray

baize veil, and, after a time, never to stop to look at the dogs one

has run down. People are apt to be so unpleasant about their dogs.

The additions to my education made me a properly equipped maiden aunt,

and by spring I was quite tractable. So when Halsey suggested camping

in the Adirondacks and Gertrude wanted Bar Harbor, we compromised on a

good country house with links near, within motor distance of town and

telephone distance of the doctor. That was how we went to Sunnyside.

We went out to inspect the property, and it seemed to deserve its name.

Its cheerful appearance gave no indication whatever of anything out of

the ordinary. Only one thing seemed unusual to me: the housekeeper,

who had been left in charge, had moved from the house to the gardener's

lodge, a few days before. As the lodge was far enough away from the

house, it seemed to me that either fire or thieves could complete their

work of destruction undisturbed. The property was an extensive one:

the house on the top of a hill, which sloped away in great stretches of

green lawn and clipped hedges, to the road; and across the valley,

perhaps a couple of miles away, was the Greenwood Club House. Gertrude

and Halsey were infatuated.

"Why, it's everything you want," Halsey said "View, air, good water and

good roads. As for the house, it's big enough for a hospital, if it

has a Queen Anne front and a Mary Anne back," which was ridiculous: it

was pure Elizabethan.