He indicated one of the houses they were passing, an unusually interesting combination of wood and stone, half hidden beneath spreading vines.

“Yes, that’s charming,” she agreed.  “And I like the next even better, don’t you?”

The next was of a different style entirely, less ambitious and more friendly of appearance, with long reaches of porch and pergola, and more than usually well-arranged masses of shrubbery enhancing the whole effect of withdrawal from the public gaze.

“I do, I think, for some reasons.  You choose the least pretentious houses, every time, don’t you?  Don’t care a bit for show places?”

“Not a bit,” owned the girl.

“Here’s one, now,” Richard pointed it out.  “The owner spent a lot of money on that.  Would you live in it?”

“Not—­willingly.”

Richard glanced at his grandfather.  “I wonder just how much she would suffer,” he suggested, with sparkling eyes.  “Suppose we should drive in there and tell her we’d bought it!”

Mr. Kendrick turned to the figure in white at his side.  The eyes of the old man and the young woman met with understanding, and the two smiled affectionately before the meeting was over.  Richard looked on approvingly.  But he complained.

“I’d like one like that, myself,” said he.  “Robin has looked at me only three times this morning, and once was when we met, for purposes of identification!”

He had a glance of his own, then, and apparently it went to his head, for he became more animated than ever in calling the party’s attention to each piece, of property passed by.

“These are all modern,” he commented presently.  “There’s something about your really old house that can’t be copied.  Your own home, Robin—­that’s the type of antique beauty that’s come to seem to me more desirable than any other.  Isn’t there one along here somewhere that reminds one of it?”

“There’s the General Armitage place,” Roberta said.  “That must be close by, now.  It used to be far out in the country.  It was built by the same architect who built ours.  General Armitage and my great-grandfather were intimate friends—­they were in the Civil War together.”

“Here it is.”  Ruth pointed it out eagerly.  “I always like to go by it, because it looks quite a little like ours, only the grounds are much larger, and it has a wonderful old garden behind it.  Mother has often said she wished she could transplant the Armitage garden bodily, now that the house has been closed so long.  She says the old gardener is still here, and looks after the garden—­or his grandsons do.”

“Shall we drive in and see it?” proposed Richard.  “A garden like that ought to have some one to admire it now and then.”