But this, after all, was the great salt sea, the very source of life, and the sun made it glitter, and the wind blew off it, fresh and invigorating. It was something.
There they sat, with their arms about each other, such forlorn and lovely creatures! Nina De Haaven, dark and delicate; Rose taller, stronger, with a beautiful eagerness in her face, as if she waited in trust and delight for whatever her destiny might bring. She was twenty-four, and she had never really feared anything in her life.
Rose was not afraid, now, of this new existence, only a little puzzled, because she would have to be the one to start it. Nina was five years older, but she was too gentle, too easily rebuffed; she had never quite trusted life again after her beloved husband died.
“There’s dinner,” thought Rose. “I’m sure they don’t supply food with furnished bungalows. I’ll have to buy it and cook it. Mercy!”
She had to do it, though, and she would.
“Bread and butter,” she also thought, “and eggs and milk, and tea and coffee, and sugar and spice. Everything goes in pairs! Coal and wood—”
Nina, less abstracted, started up.
“Somebody’s knocking somewhere!” she said. “I believe it’s our own back door. I’ll go.” And she vanished into the house. Rose followed promptly, and found her in the little kitchen, stooping over a basket on the table.
“It must be the dinner!” Nina declared, very much pleased. “There are all sorts of things here.”
“How can it be the dinner?” Rose asked. She, too, bent over the basket and was enchanted by the varied assortment therein.