Olive was twenty-five. Twenty-five is the standard age, so to speak,
of bungalow matrons. My closest scrutiny has failed to discover one
a day older. It is too early for any one to forecast the ultimate
fate of the bungalow. The bungalow speaks for youth, and whether it
will survive as an architectural type, or whether those hopeful young
married persons who trustingly kindle their domestic altars in bungalow
fireplaces will be found there in contentment at fifty, is not for this
writing. What did strike me was the fact that Olive, being twenty-five,
was an anomaly as a bungalow lady by reason of her unmarriedness.
Her domesticity was complete, her efficiency indisputable, her charm
ineffable; and it seemed that here was a chance to perfect a type
which I, with my strong scientific bent, could not suffer to pass.
By the mere process of changing the name on her visiting card, and
moving from a brown to a green bungalow, she might become the perfect
representation of the most interesting and delightful type of American
women. Half of my study of bungalow life was finished, and a publisher
to whom I submitted the early chapters returned them immediately with a
contract, whose terms were in all ways generous, so that I was able to
view the future in that jaunty confidence with which young folk intrust
their fate to the bungalow gods.
I looked up from my writing-table, which the chill air had driven
indoors, and saw Olive on her lawn engaged in some mysterious
occupation. She was whistling the while she dabbed paint with a brush
and a sophisticated air upon the bruised legs of the baby’s high chair.
At my approach Romance nudged Realism. Or maybe it was Realism that
nudged Romance. I cannot see that it makes the slightest difference,
one way or another, on whose initiative I spoke: let it suffice that
I did speak. Realism and Romance tripped away and left me alone
with the situation. When I had spoken Olive rose, viewed her work
musingly, with head slightly tilted, and still whistling touched the
foot-rest of the baby chair lingeringly with the paint-brush. Those
neat cans of prepared paint which place the most fascinating of joys
within the range of womankind are in every well-regulated bungalow
tool-closet--and another chapter for my book began working in my
subconsciousness.
A little later Romance and Realism returned and stood to right and left
of us by the living-room fire. Realism, in the outward form of W. D.
H., winked at Romance as represented by R. L. S. I observed that W. D.
H., in a pepper-and-salt business suit, played with his eye-glasses; R.
L. S., in a velvet jacket, toyed with his dagger hilt.
Olive informed me that her atrabilious brother was about to marry a
widow in Emerson Road, so there seemed to be no serious obstacle to
the immediate perfecting of Olive as a type by a visit to the young
clergyman in the white bungalow in Channing Lane, on the other side
of Sherwood Forest Addition. Romance and Realism therefore quietly
withdrew and left us to discuss the future.
“I think,” said Olive with a far-away look in her eyes, “that there
should be a box of geraniums on our veranda rail next summer, and that
a hen-house could be built back of the coal shed without spoiling the
looks of the yard.”
As I saw no objection whatever to these arrangements, we took the baby
for a walk, met Tom at the car, and later we all dined together at
the brown bungalow. I seem to recall that there was roast fowl for
dinner, a salad with the smoothest of mayonnaise, canned apricots, and
chocolate layer cake, and a Schumann programme afterward.