"No, nothing particular," I replied.
"Then you won't mind coming with me to see some new houses."
I gasped. The murder was out.
"Some new houses!" I cried.
"You can't expect me to go alone," she said calmly. "It would hardly be safe--to say nothing of its impropriety--for a lady, unaccompanied, to wander through a number of empty houses with the street door shut. We read of such dreadful things in the papers."
"Quite true; they are enough to make one's hair stand on end. It would not be prudent. But what necessity is there for you to go into a number of empty houses?"
"How stupid you are!" she exclaimed. "You know we must move; you know that it is impossible for us to remain in this house any longer."
"Why not?"
"Such a question! And the house in the state it is!"
"A very comfortable state, Maria. There is nothing whatever the matter with it."