“Oh! yes, please,” cried Harry; and in a moment he was on Hugh’s back once more, cantering joyously to the barn.
After various improvements, including some enlargement of the interior, Hugh and Harry sat down together in the low yellow twilight of their cave, to enjoy the result of their labours. They could just see, by the light from the tunnel, the glimmer of the golden hollow all about them. The rain was falling heavily out-of-doors; and they could hear the sound of the multitudinous drops of the broken cataract of the heavens like the murmur of the insects in a summer wood. They knew that everything outside was rained upon, and was again raining on everything beneath it, while they were dry and warm.
“This is nice!” exclaimed Harry, after a few moments of silent enjoyment.
“This is your first lesson in architecture,” said Hugh.
“Am I to learn architecture?” asked Harry, in a rueful tone.
“It is well to know how things came to be done, if you should know nothing more about them, Harry. Men lived in the cellars first of all, and next on the ground floor; but they could get no further till they joined the two, and then they could build higher.”
“I don’t quite understand you, sir.”
“I did not mean you should, Harry.”
“Then I don’t mind, sir. But I thought architecture was building.”
“So it is; and this is one way of building. It is only making an outside by pulling out an inside, instead of making an inside by setting up an outside.”