No phonograph broke upon the evening stillness with an ear-splitting din, no unholy piccolo sounded above the other tortured instruments, no violin wailed pitifully at its inhuman treatment, and the piano was locked.
At seasonable hours the key might be had at the office by those who could prove themselves worthy of the trust, but otherwise quiet reigned.
Eloise Wynne
Miss Eloise Wynne came downstairs, with a book under her arm. She was fresh as the morning itself and as full of exuberant vitality. She was tall and straight and strong; her copper-coloured hair shone as though it had been burnished, and her tanned cheeks had a tint of rose. When she entered the dining-room, with a cheery "good-morning" that included everybody, she produced precisely the effect of a cool breeze from the sea.
She was thirty, and cheerfully admitted it on occasion. "If I don't look it," she said, smiling, "people will be surprised, and if I do, there would be no use in denying it. Anyhow, I'm old enough to go about alone." It was her wont to settle herself for Summer or Winter in any place she chose, with no chaperon in sight.
For a week she had been at Riverdale-by-the-Sea, and liked it on account of the lack of entertainment. People who lived there called it simply "Riverdale," but the manager of the hotel, perhaps to atone for the missing orchestra and canned vegetables, added "by-the-Sea" to the name in his modest advertisements.
Miss Wynne, fortunately, had enough money to enable her to live the much-talked-of "simple life," which is wildly impossible to the poor. As it was not necessary for her to concern herself with the sordid and material, she could occupy herself with the finer things of the soul. Just now, however, she was deeply interested in the material foundation of the finest thing in the world—a home.
A Passion for Lists
She had taken the bizarre paper slip which protected the even more striking cover of a recent popular novel, and adjusted it to a bulky volume of very different character. In her chatelaine bag she had a pencil and a note-book, for Miss Eloise was sorely afflicted with the note-book habit, and had a passion for reducing everything to lists. She had lists of things she wanted and lists of things she didn't want, which circumstances or well-meaning Santa Clauses had forced upon her; little books of addresses and telephone numbers, jewels and other personal belongings, and, finally, a catalogue of her library alphabetically arranged by author and title.