He took my arm and turned me away from the billboard toward a wide, dusty road winding away from the station to the eastward.
"But, Dicky," I protested. "I thought you wanted to see about securing that girl as a model."
"Oh, that can wait," said Dicky carelessly.
My heart sang as I slipped my arm in Dicky's. It was going to be an enjoyable day after all.
X
"GRACE BY NAME AND GRACE BY NATURE"
"What's the matter, Madge? Got a grouch or something?"
Dicky faced me in the old hall of the deserted Putnam Manor Inn, where we had expected to find warmth and food and the picturesqueness of a century back. Instead of these things we had found the place in the hands of a caretaker. Dicky had asked to go through the house on the pretence of wishing to rent it.
"I haven't a bit of a grouch." I tried to speak as cheerfully as I could, for I dreaded Dicky's anger when I told him my feeling upon the subject of going over the house under false pretences. "But I don't think it is right for us to go through the rooms. The woman wouldn't have let us come in if you hadn't said we wished to rent it. It's deception, and I wish you wouldn't insist upon my going any further. I can't enjoy seeing the rooms at all."
Dicky stared at me for a moment as if I were some specimen of humanity he had never seen before. Then he exploded.