ere I want you to see. That colonial house set way back in the
trees there."

"Williams is driving in," Nancy said as they approached it.

"He's been here before."

"Are we going to get out?" Sheila asked.

Dick was already opening the door of the tonneau and assisting Nancy
out of the car.

"I'm going to leave Sheila with Williams, and take you over the house,
Nancy. She'll be more interested in the grounds than she would in the
interior. I want you to see the inside."

He took a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the stately door.
Everything about the place was gigantic, stately,--the huge columns
that supported the roof of the porch, the big elms that flanked it,
and the great entrance hall, as they stepped into its majestic
enclosure.

"It's a biggish sort of place, isn't it?" Nancy said.

"But it's rather lovely, don't you think so?" Dick asked anxiously.
"These old places are getting increasingly hard to find,--real old
homes, dignified and beautiful, within a reasonable distance from
town."

"It is lovely," Nancy said, "it could be made perfectly wonderful to
live in. I can see this big hall--furnished in mahogany or even carved
oak that was old enough. Thank heaven, we're no longer slaves to a
_period_ in our decorating; we can use anything that's beautiful and
suitable and not intrinsically incongruous with a clear conscience."

"Come up-stairs."

Nancy lingered on the landing of the fine old staircase, white
banistered with a mahogany hand-rail, that turned only once before it
led into the region up-stairs.

"I'd rather see the kitchen," she said.

"The kitchen isn't the thing that I'm proudest of. Its plumbing is
early English, or Scottish, I'm afraid. I think this arrangement up
here is delightful. See these front suites, one on either side of the
hall. Bedroom, dressing-room, sitting-room. Which do you like best? I
thought perhaps I might take the one that overlooks the orchard."

Nancy stopped still on her way from window to window.

"Dick Thorndyke, whose house _is_ this?" she demanded.

"Mine."

"Yours--have you bought it?"

"Yes, I put the deed in my safe deposit vault yesterday. Come in
here. Isn't this a cunning little guest chamber nested in the
trees? Be becoming to Betty's style of beauty, wouldn't it?" He
held the door open for her ingratiatingly, and she passed under
his arm perfunctorily.

"What on earth did you buy a house like this for?"

"I thought you might like