“Yes, honey, you’ll find ’em all along both sides of the footpath through the woods betwixt here and your place, but ’specially where you cross Chincapin Creek.”
“The woods! There! We’ll have to go back that way. Ah, Col. Anglesea, how lovely it will be when Odalite and Leonidas live here! There are so many lovely ways of going between the two places. Just listen now while I tell you. We may walk by the shore, as we did this morning, or we may walk through the woods, as we shall this afternoon. We may ride horseback along the shore or through the woods, or we may drive in a carriage along the shore or along the turnpike road through the woods; or, best of all, we may row in a boat from the landing at the foot of our hill to the landing at the foot of this hill. Oh, it will be perfectly delightful!”
Col. Anglesea looked at the child with his sinister smile, but she was too happy to notice anything evil in it.
They took leave of the lawyer and the farmer, and started to walk home through the woods, chattering all the way of the beauty of Greenbushes even now, and the delight of the prospect ahead.
“It is too late this season; but mind, Odalite, next spring you are to have a mansard roof, and bay windows, and—balconies, and—and—towers and things,” said Elva.
“Perhaps,” quietly replied Odalite.
“Why, there is no ‘perhaps’ about it! Le said you were to do just as you please with the house,” suggested Wynnette.
“But that did not mean I should burn it down,” said Odalite.
“Of course it did not. What do——”
“And he did not mean I should tear it down either, as I should have to do to make all the improvements our ambitious little Elva suggests. Why, darling, we might as well talk of putting a mansard on the top of that clump of Scotch firs as on that irregularly built farmhouse.”