She hung round her father's neck and kissed him in a fervent, excited way.
"You good old father!" she said, "you sweet old father!"
He took one of her soft, supple hands and held it between both his brown and horny ones.
"Louisianny," he said, "I 'low to make ye happy; ef the Lord haint nothin' agin it, I 'low to do it!"
He went out after that, and left her alone to set her things to rights; but when he had gone and closed the door, she did not touch them. She threw herself down flat upon the floor in the midst of them, her slender arms flung out, her eyes wide open and wild and dry.
CHAPTER XIII.
A NEW PLAN.
At last the day came when the house was finished and stood big and freshly painted and bare in the sun. Late one afternoon in the Indian summer, Casey and his men, having bestowed their last touches, collected their belongings and went away, leaving it a lasting monument to their ability. Inside, instead of the low ceilings, and painted wooden walls, there were high rooms and plaster and modern papering; outside, instead of the variegated piazza, was a substantial portico. The whole had been painted a warm gray, and Casey considered his job a neat one and was proud of it. When they were all gone Louisiana went out into the front yard to look at it. She stood in the grass and leaned against an apple-tree. It was near sunset, and both trees and grass were touched with a yellow glow so deep and mellow that it was almost a golden haze. Now that the long-continued hammering and sawing was at an end and all traces of its accompaniments removed, the stillness seemed intense. There was not a breath of wind stirring, or the piping of a bird to be heard. The girl clasped her slender arms about the tree's trunk and rested her cheek against the rough bark. She looked up piteously.
"I must try to get used to it," she said. "It is very much nicer—and I must try to get used to it."