“How I should like to help you!”
“No, Monsieur Paul, you would dirty your clothes; you might hurt yourself; it is not your business. But you may see us work, if you like.”
“It must be a capital amusement to build!”
“As to amusement, it’s no amusement; yet it isn’t so disagreeable neither, when you have to work for a good gentleman like your father; when you have your pay regular, and a bottle of wine when it’s hot; and when the people you work for do not grudge you what’s reasonable—that’s comfortable. You do your work, and pick up your tools at the end of the day with a merry heart. But when you have to do with close-fisted people, it’s a miserable business, for you must pay for what you have to work with. This plaster in the cart, and the bricks, and so on, cost money of course. And if you can’t get paid yourself, you must find money somewhere, and get into no end of trouble. But I must be off; there’s my lad waiting for me.”
“Could you build a large house, Master Branchu?”
“I should think so, Master Paul. Why, I built the mayor’s, which is big enough in all conscience!”
Meantime, Paul no longer finds the hours hang heavily, as they did the day before; he has got an idea.
This house in prospect for his sister has seized on his imagination; he figures it to himself sometimes as a palace, sometimes as a turreted manor-house of the old style, sometimes as a Swiss cottage, covered with ivy and clematis, with innumerable carved balconies. He has a grown-up cousin who is an architect; he has often seen him at work at a drawing-board; under his hand buildings rose as by enchantment. It did not appear very difficult work. His cousin Eugène has the necessary instruments in the room he occupies when he comes to the château. Paul will try to put on paper one of those plans of which his imagination has given him a glimpse. But there is a difficulty at the outset. He must know what would suit his sister best; a baronial castle, with towers and battlements, a Swiss cottage, or an Italian villa. If it is to take her by surprise, the surprise must be at any rate an agreeable one. After a good hour’s meditation, M. Paul thinks, and with some reason, that he ought to go and consult his father.
“Oh, oh! you are in a great hurry,” said his father, after Paul’s first words. “But we are not quite so far advanced as that. You want to draw a plan for Marie’s house. Well, try then. But in the first place, we must know what your sister wants—how she would like her house arranged. After all, I am not sorry to hasten forward things a little. We will send her a telegram.”
Telegram.