o 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.

Of course we took the place; it was not my idea of comfort, being much
too large and sufficiently isolated to make the servant