“And in your lightest overcoat! I thought you only wore this one because you were going to buy a new fur coat in Chicago.”
“Well, I didn’t,” he said rather shortly. “Let’s omit the verb ‘to buy’ in all forms for a time. Keep dinner back a little, will you, Lillian? I want to take a warm bath and dress. I did get rather chilled coming up.”
Mrs. St. Peter went to the kitchen, and, after a discreet interval, followed her husband upstairs and into his room.
“I know you’re tired, but tell me one thing: did you find the painted Spanish bedroom set?”
“Oh, dear, yes! Several of them.”
“And were they pretty?”
“Very. At least, I think I’d have found them so if I’d come upon them without so many other things. Too much is certainly worse than too little—of anything. It turned out to be rather an orgy of acquisition.”
“Rosamond lost her head?”
“Oh, no! Perfectly cool. I should say she had a faultless purchasing manner. Wonder where a girl who grew up in that old house of ours ever got it. She was like Napoleon looting the Italian palaces.”
“Don’t be harsh. You had a nice little vacation, at any rate.”
“A very expensive one, for a poor professor. And not much rest.”
A look of sharp anxiety came into Mrs. St. Peter’s face. “You mean,” she breathed in a hushed voice, “that she let you—”
He cut in sharply. “I mean that I paid my way, as I hope always to be able to do. Any suggestion to the contrary might have been very graceful, but