Now this extremely discouraging way and manner of Miss Hipsy’s was entirely general and impersonal, like dampness or a close smell in a long unused house. Congenitally sub-acid, a failure to accomplish any sort of an early or late love affair had completely soured her, and many years of solitude had put a gray-green coating of mildew over her moral nature. But the Wicks did not know this, and, remembering their peculiar position, it made them feel extremely uncomfortable.
But the moon came out in the soft Spring sky, and the mists of the evening rolled away, and a great silvery radiance wrapped the cathedral-like spires and pinnacles of the broad spreading pine forest, and, after awhile, the rough corduroy road grew smoother, and the baby stopped crying and went to sleep, and they were all, except Miss Hipsy, beginning to nod off just a little when the wheels crunched on a driveway of white pebbles, and they looked up to see a spacious low building standing out black against the sky, except where a half a dozen brightly lit windows winked at them like friendly eyes.
This was the bungalow, and here they found a sportsman’s supper of cold meat and ale awaiting them. Miss Hipsy told them, by way of leaving no doubt of the unfriendliness of her intentions, that this refection was provided for in the contract. So, also, must have been the deliciously soft beds in which they were presently all fast asleep, even to the baby. And when a traveling baby will sleep, anybody else can.
In the morning the elder Wicks opened their eyes on a world of wonderment and bewilderment. They found themselves living in a well-appointed and commodious club-house, on the banks of a broad and beautiful lake, across which other similar structures with pretty, low, peaked roofs looked at them in neighborly fashion from the other side. Mrs. Wick said that it was too nice for anything.
There was nothing mysterious about the surprise which the Wicks had found awaiting them. Sportsmen have a habit of referring to their possessions in a depreciatory way. They call a comfortable club-house a “box” or a “bungalow” or a “shack,” and they make nothing of calling a costly hotel a “camp.” Indeed, they seem to try to impart a factitious flavor of profanity by christening such structures, whenever they can, “Middle Dam Camp” or “Upper Dam Camp.” And since Mrs. Wick’s father’s club had died out, the further side of Jericho Pond had become a fashionable resort, maintaining two or three Winter and Summer Sanitariums.
Thanks to the contract, they made an excellent breakfast, and their praises of the fare mollified Miss Hipsy to some slight extent. Then they remembered the baby, and after some search they found the Irish nurse walking it up and down on a broad sunny terrace at the back of the house. Below stretched an old-fashioned garden, full of homely, pleasant flowers and simples just beginning to show their buds to the tempting month of May.
The scene was so pleasant that Mr. and Mrs. Wick started out for a walk, and the walk was so pleasant that they prolonged it,—prolonged it until they reached the settlement on the other side of the lake, and the people there were so pleasant that they staid to dinner at a club, and did not get back till nearly supper-time.
* * *