l 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.

A comely Englishwoman of about 40 years answered Dicky's sounding of
the quaintly carved knocker. He lifted his hat with a curtly bow.

"We were told at Putnam Manor that we might be able to get dinner
here," he began. "We came down from the city this morning expecting
that the inn would be open. But we found it closed and we are very
hungry. Would it be possible for you to accommodate us?"

"I think we shall be able to give you a fairly good dinner," she said
with a simple directness that pleased me. "My husband went fishing
yesterday and I have some very good pan fish and some oysters. If you
are very hungry I can give you the oysters almost at once, and it will
not take very long to broil the fish. Then, if you care for anything
like that, we had an old-fashioned chicken pie for our