"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 it." "I--what have I to do with it?" Dick turned the rusty key in the lock deliberately, and put it in his pocket, thus closing them into the little musty room which had no other exit. A branch of flaming maple leaves tapped lightly on the window. "You've a whole lot to do with it, Nancy," he said. "It's yours, and I'm yours, and I want to know how much longer you're going to hedge." "I'm not hedging," Nancy blazed. "Take that key out of your pocket. This is moving-picture stuff." "I know it is. I can't get you to talk to me any other way, so I thought I'd try main force for a change." "Well, it is a change," she agreed. "Shall I begin to scream now, or do you intend to give me some other provocation?"