“You’re married then?”
“Oh, no; no, indeed. Nothing like that,” he assured me hastily.
“Then what the dickens do you want with a house in the country?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Appleby. “Where can we go and talk?”
I suggested a certain coffee house, hidden away in a side street.
“The coffee,” I said, as we started there, “is the best Java in New York. It is raised for the exclusive use of a royal family in Europe; but now and then the royal steward sells a bag to this coffee house. It has to be smuggled in, bean by bean; the man said so.”
“Smuggled in, bean by bean,” repeated Appleby. “Do you think I could get a bag?”
“A whole bag? What for?”
“For my house, of course,” he said. “I could serve it at the housewarming.”
“Well,” I said, “it strikes me that a fellow who plans what sort of coffee he’ll serve at the housewarming of a house that isn’t even started yet must like to peer into the future.”