I knew better than to make any answer.  I wished above everything else to have this day end happily, this whole day to ourselves in the country, upon which I had counted so much.  I feared Dicky would be angry enough to return to the city, as he had threatened to do when he found the inn closed.  So it was with much relief that after we had gone back into the other room I heard him ask the caretaker if there were some place in the neighborhood where we could obtain a meal.

“Do you know where the Shakespeare House is?” she asked.

“Never heard of it,” Dicky answered, “although I’ve been around here quite a bit, too.”

“It’s about six blocks further down toward the bay,” she said, still in the same colorless tone she had used from the first.  “It’s on Shore Road.  The Germans own it.  Mr. Gorman, he’s a builder, and he built an old house over into a copy of Shakespeare’s house in England.  Mrs. Gorman is English.  She serves tea there on the porch in the summer, and I’ve heard she will serve a meal to anybody that happens along any time of the year, although she doesn’t keep a regular restaurant.  That’s the only place I know of anywhere near.  Of course, down on the bay there’s the Marvin Harbor Hotel.  You can get a pretty good meal there.”

“Thank you very much,” said Dicky, laying a dollar bill down on the table near us.

I had a sudden flash of understanding.  Dicky meant all the time to recompense the woman in this way for allowing us to see the house.  But the principle of the thing remained the same.  Why could he not have told her frankly that he wished to look at the house and given her the dollar in the beginning?

I did not ask the question, however, even after we had left the old mansion and were walking down the road.  I felt like adopting the old motto and leaving well enough alone.

I did not speak again until we had turned from the street down which we were walking into a winding thoroughfare labelled “Shore Road.”  Then a thought which had come to me during our walk demanded utterance.

“Dicky,” I said quietly, “wasn’t Gorman the name of the woman of whom the station master told you, and didn’t she live on Shore Road?”

Dicky stopped short as if he had been struck.

“Of course it was,” he almost shouted.  “What a ninny I was not to remember it.  She’s the sister of that stunning girl we saw in the train.  Isn’t this luck?  I may be able to get that girl to pose for me after all.”

But I did not echo his sentiments.  Secretly I hoped the girl would not be at her sister’s home.

“This surely must be the place, Dicky,” I said as we rounded a sudden turn on Shore Road and caught sight of a quaint structure that seemed to belong to the 16th century rather than the 20th.

Dicky whistled.  “Well!  What do you want to know about that?” he demanded of the horizon in general, for the little brown house with its balconies projecting from unexpected places and its lattice work cunningly outlined against its walls was well worth looking at.  But our hunger soon drove us through the gate and up the steps.