The next morning we reached Windy Creek, the station nearest our destination, and continued our journey by stage.
“People will think you have consoled yourself very speedily for the death of your first husband,” I observed, as we were en route.
“Why, what do you mean, Lucien?”
“You know Diogenes addresses me as stepdaddy. It is the only word he speaks plainly.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed in perturbation, “I never thought of that! Well, we can explain to everyone, or I’ll teach them to leave off the ‘step.’”
“Not on your life!” I demurred.
“He had better call you Lucien, then. Emerald calls his father ‘Felix.’”
She at once began her tutelage of the bewildered Diogenes. After several stabs at pronouncing Lucien he managed to evolve “Ocean” to which he sometimes affixed “step” so that people to whom he was not explained doubtless thought me the latest thing in dances.
Hope Haven was like most resorts––a place safe to shun. There was a low, flat stretch of woods in which a clearing had been made for a barn-like structure called a hotel, with rooms rough and not always ready. The beautiful recreation grounds mentioned in the advertising matter consisted of a plowed field worked over into a space designated as a tennis court and a grass-grown croquet ground.