Highfalutin’
THE BUNGALOW COLONY WAS A MAELSTROM OF MISUNDERSTANDING, BUT THE SHIP’S OFFICER ASHORE NEVER LOST HIS BEARINGS
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
“WE must simply look on it as a—a lark!” said Mrs. De Haaven, resolutely. But her voice was not very steady, and her smile was somewhat strained, for in her heart she saw this, not as a lark, but as something very close to a tragedy.
“It’s wonderfully light and airy,” her sister Rose began.
This was true; a fresh sea breeze went blowing through the rooms, fluttering the curtains and stirring the dark hair on Rose’s temples. The tiny house was sweet with sun and salt wind. Both Mrs. De Haaven and her sister could appreciate this, and they were sternly determined to appreciate every possible good point about their new home.
But—it was so tiny, so bare, so terribly strange; a sitting room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, divided by partitions which did not reach to the unstained rafters; painted floors, badly scuffed, the queerest collection of scarred, weather-beaten furniture.
“It will be like—camping out!” Mrs. De Haaven decided.
The trouble was, that neither of them had had any sort of experience in camping out, and, what is more, had never desired any such experience. They had led the most casual, pleasant existence; when they had wanted to be in the city, they had occupied Mrs. De Haaven’s charming little flat; when it occurred to them that they would enjoy the country, they had gone out to the old De Haaven farm on Long Island; if the impulse seized them to travel, travel they did, in a comfortable and leisurely fashion.