“Well, what I am getting at,” said Henry Anderson, “is this. Is there anything I can do to help you with that billiard room that you’re going to convert to a workroom? What do you lack in it that you would like to have? Do you need more light or air, or a fireplace, or what? When you take us to the station, suppose you drive us past your house and give me a look at that room and let me think over it a day or two. I might be able to make some suggestion that would help you.”
“Now that is positively sweet of you,” said Linda. “I never thought of such a thing as either comfort or convenience. I thought I had to take that room as it stands and do the best I could with it, but since you mention it, it’s barely possible that more air might be agreeable and also more light, and if there could be a small fireplace built in front of the chimney where it goes up from the library fireplace, it certainly would be a comfort, and it would add something to the room that nothing else could. “No workroom really has a soul if you can’t smell smoke and see red when you go to it at night.”
“You little outdoor heathen,” laughed Peter Morrison. “One would think you were an Indian.”
“I am a fairly good Indian,” said Linda. “I have been scouting around with my father a good many years. How about it, Peter? Does the road go crooked?”
“Yes,” said Peter, “the road goes crooked.”
“Does the bed of the spring curve and sweep across the lawn and drop off to the original stream below the tree-tobacco clump there?”
“If you say so, it does,” said Peter.
“Including the bridge?” inquired Linda.
“Including the bridge,” said Peter. “I’ll have to burn some midnight oil, but I can visualize the bridge.”
“And is this house where you ‘set up your rest,’ as you so beautifully said the other night at dinner, going to lay its corner stone and grow to its roof a selfish house, or is it going to be generous enough for a gracious lady and a flight of little footsteps?”