She thought from his glance at her that he attached some special significance to her unwillingness to go to the Whitney house and hastened to assure him this was not the case.
"Frederica's a dear. Only I just happen to feel like not being anybody's guest to-night. Oh, and I didn't mean you by that either."
"It's nice to be nobody in that sense," he said.
His next suggestion was that he get his car, start north up the shore with her, have dinner at one of the taverns along the road and deliver her in good season for a night's sleep in the cottage at Ravinia.
But this suggestion was declined rather more curtly.
"To-morrow is as soon as I want to go there," she said. "Pete's going over then to get father so I shall go on duty. But meanwhile I'll let him enjoy his holiday in peace."
He made no further demur to telephoning over to the Blackstone.
On his coming back presently with the news that he had a room for her, she said, "Then we've nothing on our minds, have we? Except finding a place for dinner that's quiet and—not too romantic. I am glad you came to meet me."
She was quite sincere about this. It would have been ghastly she reflected, to have spent the evening alone in a hotel bedroom with her own thoughts, if those she had entertained on the train coming in were a fair sample.
He was being just as nice to her as possible. By his old-fashioned standards, no hotel was a proper place for a young girl to spend a night in alone. Yet beyond offering two alternative suggestions, he forbore trying to dissuade her. So when he chose the Saddle and Cycle as their anchorage for the evening, she endorsed his choice with the best appearance of enthusiasm she could muster, though she'd rather have gone to a place where three out of four of the other diners wouldn't in all probability be known to her.