CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Spring has come, and the McAlisters are putting on their annual addition," Hope wrote to Archie in April. "It is on the west side, a new wing. Mother calls the upper room Archie's room. At present, the downstairs room goes by the name of The Annex, because we have exhausted our ingenuity in naming the other rooms, and have nothing left for this."
The name proved to be an enduring one, while the process of building was more exciting than usual. Dr. McAlister had decided to have the cellar extended for the wing; and the rocky ledge on which the house was perched rendered blasting a necessity. For a week, they lived in a state of alarm lest the house should be jarred down about their ears. For a week, they heard the steady clink, clink of the hammers on the drills, the thud of the stone-laden hogsheads rolled over the boards above the rock, and the thunder of the blast as it exploded. By the time the week was ended, the noisy work of the carpenters seemed, in comparison, like sweet music.
Strange to say, it was Allyn who most gloried in the confusion, and, from the first shovelful of earth to the last nail, he was always to be found in the thick of the fray. No matter how often the workmen picked him up and returned him to his mother, he invariably reappeared under their feet again, five minutes later, to be alternately a target for their profanity and a receptacle for choice morsels from their luncheons.
"No, Allyn," Hope said, with decision, when she found him investigating the tip of a freshly-lighted fuse; "you mustn't go there again, ever. Do you hear sister?"
"Ess," lisped the culprit. "I hears; but it is so instering."
"Too interesting for a baby like you," Hope said, laughing, in spite of her pale cheeks. "If you do that again, Allyn, sister won't have any little brother to cuddle."
"Why for not?"
"Because you'll be killed, dear."