“Yes; are you?”
“I try to give myself the air of it when I am feeling very proud. But really, we live at a most charming little hotel on a back street, out of the whirl and rush that we should prefer to be in if we could afford it.” He said it must be delightful, and he made the proper inquiries about Mrs. March. Kendricks never forgot the gentleman in the artist, and he was as true to the convenances as if they had been principles. That was what made Mrs. March like his stories so much more than the stories of some people who wrote better. He said he would drop in during the afternoon, and I went indoors on the pretext of buying a newspaper. Then, without engaging rooms for Mrs. Deering and Miss Gage, I hurried home.
VIII
“Well, did you get the rooms?” asked my wife as soon as she saw me.
She did not quite call it across the street to me as I came up from where she sat on the piazza.
“No, I didn’t,” I said boldly, if somewhat breathlessly.
“Why didn’t you? You ought to have gone to the States if they were full at the Grand Union.”
“They were not full, unless Kendricks got their last room.”
“Do you mean that he was there? Mr. Kendricks? If you are hoaxing me, Basil!”
“I am not, my dear; indeed I’m not,” said I, beginning to laugh, and this made her doubt me the more.