"Another one of your scruples, eh? By Jove, I wonder where you keep them all. You're always ready to trot one out just in time to spoil any little thing I'm trying to do for your pleasure or mine."
"Please hush, Dicky," I pleaded. I was afraid the woman in the next room would hear him, he spoke in such loud tones.
"I'll hush when I get good and ready." I longed to shake him, his tone and words were so much like those of a spoiled child. But he lowered his tone, nevertheless, and stood for a minute or two in sulky silence before the empty fireplace.
"Well! Come along," he said at last. "I'm sure there is no pleasure to me in looking over this place. I've seen it often enough when old Forsman had it filled with colonial junk, and served the best meals to be found on Long Island. It's like a coffin now to me. But I thought you might like to look it over, as you had never seen it. But for heaven's sake let us respect your scruples!"
I knew better than to make any answer. I wished above everything else to have this day end happily, this whole day to ourselves in the country, upon which I had counted so much. I feared Dicky would be angry enough to return to the city, as he had threatened to do when he found the inn closed. So it was with much relief that after we had gone back into the other room I heard him ask the caretaker if there were some place in the neighborhood where we could obtain a meal.
"Do you know where the Shakespeare House is?" she asked.
"Never heard of it," Dicky answered, "although I've been around here quite a bit, too."
"It's about six blocks further down toward the bay," she said, still in the same colorless tone she had used from the first. "It's on Shore Road. The Germans own it. Mr. Gorman, he's a builder, and he built an old house over into a copy of Shakespeare's house in England. Mrs. Gorman is English. She serves tea there on the porch in the summer, and I've heard she will serve a meal to anybody that happens along any time of the year, although she doesn't keep a regular restaurant. That's the only place I know of anywhere near. Of course, down on the bay there's the Marvin Harbor Hotel. You can get a pretty good meal there."
"Thank you very much," said Dicky, laying a dollar bill down on the table near us.
I had a sudden flash of understanding. Dicky meant all the time to recompense the woman in this way for allowing us to see the house. But the principle of the thing remained the same. Why could he not have told her frankly that he wished to look at the house and given her the dollar in the beginning?