The additions to my education made me a properly equipped maiden
aunt, and by spring I was quite tractable. So when Halsey
suggested camping in the Adirondacks and Gertrude wanted Bar
Harbor, we compromised on a good country house with links near,
within motor distance of town and telephone distance of the
doctor. That was how we went to Sunnyside.

We went out to inspect the property, and it seemed to deserve its
name. Its cheerful appearance gave no indication whatever of
anything out of the ordinary. Only one thing seemed unusual to
me: the housekeeper, who had been left in charge, had moved from
the house to the gardener's lodge, a few days before. As the
lodge was far enough away from the house, it seemed to me that
either fire or thieves could complete their work of destruction
undisturbed. The property was an extensive one: the house on the
top of a hill, which sloped away in great stretches of green lawn
and clipped hedges, to the road; and across the valley, perhaps a
couple of miles away, was the Greenwood Club House. Gertrude and
Halsey were infatuated.

"Why, it's everything you want," Halsey said "View, air, good
water and good roads. As for the house, it's big enough for a
hospital, if it has a Queen Anne front and a Mary Anne back,"
which was ridiculous: it was pure Elizabethan.

Of course we took the place; it was not my idea of comfort, being
much too large and sufficiently isolated to make the servant
question serious. But I give myself credit for this: whatever
has happened since, I never blamed Halsey and Gertrude for taking