“You see,” said Anthony, mopping his heated brow, “it isn’t like having big, high rooms to decorate. These little rooms,”—he put up his hand and succeeded, from his fine height, in touching the ceiling of the lower front room in which they stood—“won’t stand anything but the most simple treatment, and expensive papers and upholsteries would be out of place. It will take only very small rugs to suit the floors. The main thing for you to think of will be colours and effects. You’ll find five hundred dollars will go a long way, even after the repairs and outside painting are disposed of.”
He looked so appealing that Juliet could but answer heartily: “Yes, I’m sure of it. And now, Tony, don’t you think you’d better draw a plan of the house, putting in all the measurements, so we shall know just how to go to work? And I will go around and dream a while in each room. Give me the photograph, you devoted lover, so I can plan things to suit her.”
Anthony laughed and put his hand into his breast-pocket. But he drew it out empty.
“Why—I’ve left it behind,” he admitted in some embarrassment. “I really thought I had it.”
“Oh, Tony! And on this very trip when we needed it most! How could you leave it behind? Don’t you always carry it next your heart?”
“Is that the prescribed place?”
“Certainly. I should doubt a man’s love if he did not constantly wear my likeness right where it could feel his heart beating for me.”
“Now I never supposed,” remarked Anthony, considering her attentively, “that you had so much romance about you. Do you realise that for an extremely practical young person such as you have—mostly—appeared to be, that is a particularly sentimental suggestion? Er—should you wear his in the same way, may I inquire?”
“Of course,” returned Juliet with defiance in her eyes, whose lashes, when they fell at length before his steadily interested gaze, swept a daintily colouring cheek.
“Have you ever worn one?” inquired this hardy young man, nothing daunted by these signs of righteous indignation. But all he got for answer was a vigorous: