"It can't be huge," I admitted, "but it can be real. It can be as deep as we want it."
Having decided upon the enterprise I hurried forth to engage the hands to do the work. I could not endure a day's delay.
The first carpenter with whom I spoke knew nothing about such things. The next one had helped to put in one small "hard-coal, wall pocket," and the third man had seen fireplaces in Norway, but remembered little about their construction. After studying Zulime's sketch of what we wanted, he gloomily remarked, "I don't believe I can make that thing gee."
Zulime was disheartened by all this, but Mary Isabel climbed to my knee as if to say, "Boppa, where is my fireplace?"
My courage returned. "It shall be built if I have to import a mason from Chicago," I declared, and returned to the campaign.
"Can't you build a thing like this?" I asked a plasterer, showing him a magazine picture of a fireplace.
He studied it with care, turning it from side to side. "A rough pile o' brick like that?"
"Just like that."
"Common red brick?"
"Yes, just the kind you use for outside walls."