old at that. But she has covered
them with spats, so that no one will suspect that she wears them from
necessity, not choice."

"Well, I'll be--" Dicky uttered his favorite expletive. "It takes one
woman to dissect another. She looked like the readiest kind of ready
money to me. Why, say, if what you say is true, she ought to be glad
to earn the money I could pay her for posing. I could get her lots of
other work, too."

"Perhaps she wouldn't like to do that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing? What's wrong with it?" Dicky asked belligerently.
"Oh, you mean figure posing! She wouldn't have to do that at all
if she didn't want to. Plenty of good nudes. It's the intangible,
high-bred look and ability to wear clothes well that's hard to get."

We had walked past the unpainted little shack that but for the word
"Marvin" in large letters painted across one end of it would never
have been taken for a railroad station. Without looking where we were
going we found ourselves in front of an immense poster on a large
board back of the station. The letters upon it were visible yards
away.

"Marvin," it read, "the prettiest, quaintest village on the south
shore. Please don't judge the town by the station."

He took my arm and turned me away from the billboard toward a wide,
dusty road winding away from the station to the eastward.

"But, Dicky," I protested. "I thought you wanted to see about securing
that girl as a model."

"Oh, that can wait," said Dicky carelessly.

My heart sang as I slipped my arm in Dicky's. It was going to be an
enjoyable day after all.

X

"GRACE BY NAME AND GRACE BY NATURE"

"What's the matter, Madge? Got a grouch or something?"

Dicky faced me in the old hall of the deserted Putnam Manor Inn, where
we had expected to find warmth and food and the picturesqueness of a
century back. Instead of these things we had found the place in the
hands of a caretaker. Dicky had asked to go through the house on the
pretence of wishing to rent it.

"I haven't a bit of a grouch." I tried to speak as cheerfully as I
could, for I dreaded Dicky's anger when I told him my feeling upon the
subject of going over the house under false pretences. "But I don't
think it is right for us to go through the rooms. The woman wouldn't
have let us come in if you hadn't said we wished to rent it. It's
deception, and I wish you wouldn't insist upon my going any further. I
can't enjoy seeing the rooms at all."

D