Lindsay laughed. “I should say I wasn’t. No, I just wanted to look at it.”
“I was going to say,” Hyde went on, “that it’s a very pleasant location. City folks always think it’s a lovely spot. If you was thinking of hiring it, my brother’s the agent.”
Lindsay laughed again. “Hiring a house is about as far from my plans at present as returning to France.”
“Well,” Hyde commented dryly, “judging from the way the Quinanog boys feel, I guess I know just about how much you want to do that.”
“How soon can we go to the Murray place?” Lindsay inquired.
“Now—as far as Dick’s concerned.”
“By the way,” Hyde dropped, as he turned toward the garage, “the Murrays called the place Blue Medders.”
“Blue Meadows,” Lindsay repeated aloud. And to himself, “Blue Meadows.” And again, though wordlessly, “Blue Meadows.” It was apparent that he liked the sound and the image the sound evoked.
The runabout chugged to Blue Meadows in less than ten minutes. The road branched off from the State highway at the least frequented place in its ample stretch; ran for a long way to West Quinanog. On this side road, houses were few and they grew fewer and fewer until they left Blue Meadows quite by itself. Its situation, though solitary, was not lonely. It sat near the road. Perhaps, Lindsay decided, it would have been too near if stately wine-glass elms, feathered with leaves all along their lissom trunks, in collaboration with a high lilac hedge now past its blooming, had not helped to sequester it. From the street, the house showed only a roof with two capacious chimneys, the upper story of its gray clapboarded façade.