My heart beat high with happiness. Surely, with all these plans for me, my husband's thoughts could not be much occupied with his beautiful model. As he lifted me down to the station platform at Marvin I looked with friendliness at the dingy, battered old railroad station which I remembered, at the defiant sign near it which trumpeted in large type, "Don't judge the town by the station," and the winding main street of the village, which, when I had visited Marvin before, Dicky had wished to show me.
Upon that other visit our first sight of Grace Draper and Dicky's interest in her had spoiled the trip for me. I had insisted upon going back without seeing some of the things Dicky had planned to show me, and I had disliked the thought of the town ever since. But with Dicky's loving plans for my happiness dazzling me, I felt a touch of the glamour with which he invested the place in my eyes. I caught at his hand in an unwonted burst of tenderness.
"Let's walk down that old winding street which you told me about last winter," I said. "I've wanted to see it ever since you spoke about it."
"We'll probably motor down it instead," he grinned. "There's a real estate office just opposite here, and I see the agent's flivver in front of the door, where he stands just inside his office. The spider and the fly, eh, Madge? Well, Mr. Spider, here are two dear little flies for you!"
"Oh, Dicky!" I dragged at his arm in protest. "Don't spoil our first view of that street by whirling through it in a car. Let's saunter down it first and then come back to the real estate man."
"You have a gleam of human intelligence, sometimes, don't you?" Dicky inquired banteringly. Then he took my arm to help me across the rough places in the country road.
We had almost reached the door of the office when Dicky caught sight of a plainly dressed woman coming toward us. I heard him catch his breath, his grasp on my arm tightened, and with an indescribable agile movement he fairly bolted into the real estate office, dragging me with him.
"I'll explain later," he said in my ear. "Just follow my lead now."
As he turned to the rotund little real estate agent, who came forward to greet us, a look of surprise on his round face, I looked through the window at the woman from whose sight he had dodged.
Then I felt that I needed an explanation, indeed.