"O Elihu!" said Amarita, in a tone of generous awe. "You think you could?"
"Think?" said Elihu. "No, I don't think. I know it. Mebbe I couldn't draw out a house with cubelows and piazzas and jogs and the like o' that, but that ain't what we've got in mind. It's a good old-fashioned house, and I s'pose any man of us could do it, only nobody's got the nerve to try. So I took it into my head to be the one."
"Well," said his mother skeptically, "mebbe you can an' mebbe you can't. Good-night, all."
But Amarita leaned forward across the table, her eager eyes upon the paper. She had forgotten her resentment. It was happiness to her to see Elihu doing what he liked and succeeding in it.
"O Elihu," said she, "show it to me, won't you? Tell me what the rooms are."
But he was rolling up his work.
"No," he said; "wait till I get a little further along. Then I will. I'm going to the street and buy me a sheet or two o' cardboard to-morrer."
But they talked cozily about it for a half-hour, and when Elihu rose to wind the clock they were both convinced that he was a great man indeed.
All that week Elihu worked over his plan, and when he had at last set it accurately down on the cover of a bandbox, as a preliminary to drafting it out fair and large, he showed it to his wife. They had put their heads together over it at the table, when Elihu caught sight of Simeon Eldridge bringing him a cord of pine limbs.
"You wait a minute," he adjured Amarita. "I got to help him unload. I'll show it to you when I come in."