“No. Miss Aggravater is gwine to stay here to watch the workmen. Miss Aggravater gwine indeed! Catch her at it! Wish she was, dough! She might go, ’dout any danger. Cannibals wouldn’t eat her, leastways not if dey wa’n’t uncommon hungry.”
David Lindsay said no more, but mused, as he helped to land the goods.
“Dere’s an’ arckman an’ a decorum an’ a skippin’ gardener comin’ down by de stage-coach to-morrow,” explained Laban, meaning the architect, decorator and landscape gardener engaged by Colonel de Crespigney to transfigure the dreary promontory and its prison-like buildings into a habitable home for the young heiress.
“And a precious deal ob money it is a gwine to cost, too, wherever it comes from, which I do ’spects it’ll be out’n Miss Glo’s own fortin’, for Marse Colonel Discrepancy hasn’t got too much to tro’ away, dat I knows.”
Laban was mistaken. He had been misled by appearances.
Marcel de Crespigney, leading his hermit life at the promontory, never receiving company and never going from home except when he went to take his ward from school, spent little money, had few wants, and lived like a very much poorer gentleman than he really was.
Hence, in the years he had spent at the promontory, the revenues from the fisheries, though not large, had been left to accumulate until they had reached a round sum, which he determined to invest in the restoration and improvement of Promontory Hall, to make his home as attractive as possible to his beautiful and beloved ward.
The goods brought to the wharf were all landed and stored away in the old dilapidated store-house, and then the schooner sailed away, and David Lindsay crossed the point to the fishing landing and set about his own especial work.
The next day the architect, decorator and landscape gardener came, and work began. The three principals went back and forth between the promontory and the city once or twice a month, but the workmen remained, and were quartered in the house, to the great discontent of Miss Agrippina, who vowed that she had never spent such a disagreeable summer in all the days of her life.
The works were all completed, however, by the middle of October; the gray stone walls of the old house were completely covered by a veneering of thin white slabs, that gave the building the appearance of a marble palace. French plate-glass windows opened upon piazzas with mosaic floors and Corinthian pillars. A mansard roof crowned the mansion. A fine garden, with a parterre of flowers, bloomed around it. Beyond that, the once barren fields were verdant with grass. The fishing landing on the point had been abolished as an ugly nuisance, and a pretty pier, with an equally pretty boat-house, had been erected on the place. The old sea-wall was repaired and a hedge of Osage orange trees was planted on its inner side.