“You absurd boy! Now go to work at your measurements. I’m going upstairs. There’s one room up there, the one with the gable corners and the little bits of windows, that’s perfectly fascinating. It must be done in Delft blue and white. Since I haven’t the photograph”—she turned on the threshold to smile roguishly back at him—“memory must serve. Beautiful dark hair; eyes like a Madonna’s; a perfect nose; the dearest mouth in the world—oh, yes——”
She vanished around the corner only to put her head in again with the air of one who fires a parting shot at a discomfited enemy: “But, Tony—do you honestly think the house is large enough for such a queen of a woman? Won’t her throne take up the whole of the first floor?”
Then she was gone up the diminutive staircase, and her light footsteps could be heard on the bare floors overhead. Left alone, Anthony Robeson stood still for a moment looking fixedly at the door by which she had gone. The smile with which he had answered her gay fling had faded; his eyes had grown dark with a singular fire; his hands were clenched. Suddenly he strode across the floor and stopped by the door. He was looking down at the quaint old latch which served instead of a knob. Then, with a glance at the unconscious back of Mrs. Dingley, sitting sleepily on the little porch outside, he stooped and pressed his lips upon the iron where Juliet’s hand had lain.
III.—Shopping with a Chaperon
“Five hundred dollars,” mused Miss Marcy, on the Boston train next morning. “Six rooms—living-room, dining-room, kitchen, and three bedrooms. That’s——”
“You forget,” warned Anthony Robeson from the seat where he faced Juliet and Mrs. Dingley. “That must cover the outside painting and repairs. You can’t figure on having more than three hundred dollars left for the inside.”
“Dear me, yes,” frowned Juliet. She held Anthony’s plan in her hand, and her tablets and pencil lay in her lap. “Well, I can spend fifty dollars on each room—only some will need more than others. The living-room will take the most—no, the dining-room.”
“The kitchen will take the most,” suggested Mrs. Dingley. “Your range will use up the most of your fifty. And kitchen utensils count up very rapidly.”