“Sh! Please don’t call me that in front of anybody, Jane. If people think I am snooping, they’ll shut up like clams and won’t tell me anything.”
Although there were only eight cottages at Shady Nook, the distance from the Reeds’ on one end to the Ditmars’ on the other was over a mile. Cliff’s father, Mr. Hunter, who had planned the little resort, knew that even in a small friendly community like this, people still liked privacy, so he had left a small strip of woods between every two cottages.
The girls walked along slowly, Mary Louise pointing out the bungalows as they passed by.
“That’s where the Hunters’ was, of course,” she said to her chum. “And now we’re coming to the Partridges’. Next is Flicks’ Inn.”
“Yes, I remember this much from last night,” nodded Jane. “But that’s as far as we got. Are there many cottages on the other side of Flicks’?”
“Only the Smiths’ and the two new ones. The Smiths don’t actually live on the river road, and you can’t call their place a cottage. It’s really the grandest house around here. Much bigger than the Hunters’ was. They have three children and a lot of servants. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are usually off traveling somewhere, and even when they’re here, they don’t eat at Flicks’.”
“So we can’t count on them for any fun?”
“No. Freckles plays with the boys, but except for that, we never see them.”
A little farther on, the girls came to the two new bungalows, set right in the heart of the woods. They were both perfectly charming; it was evident that young Mr. Ditmar was an architect with both taste and ideas.
“Don’t you love it?” whispered Jane, as the two girls approached the Ditmars’ rose-trellised bungalow. “It looks like ‘Honeymoon Cottage’ in a jig-saw puzzle!”