"I shall not mind the noise, dear," said Mrs. Willis tranquilly. "Let me see the plans again."
She held out her hand for the blue prints and four interested heads immediately bent above them, Rosemary being tall enough to look over her mother's shoulder and Sarah and Shirley pressing close to her side.
"I don't see how anyone can tell a thing from that," Rosemary complained. "There's nothing but white lines."
The doctor smiled, but his glance was on the frail, almost transparent hands which held the roll of paper flat on the desk.
"I suppose you thought that carpenters worked from photographs of completed interiors, or illustrations in interior-decoration catalogues," he suggested good-naturedly. "You see before you, Rosemary, a most practical conception of two offices and a reception room. Mr. Greggs will rip out one side of the house and add them on as a wing and when the joining is painted over you'll think those rooms were built when the original house was."
"Well—all right," conceded Rosemary, "I suppose Mr. Greggs knows. Anyway, it will be fun to have something going on. Vacation certainly isn't very exciting."
"I want to see them rip the house," announced Sarah with intense satisfaction.
"I think I owe it to Mr. Greggs almost as much as to Mother, to have you at a safe distance before the ripping begins," said Doctor Hugh a little grimly. "Somehow I have the feeling, Sarah, that the best-laid plans of architects may go awry when you're about."
"Huh!" retorted Sarah, abandoning blue prints for her favorite goatskin rug on which she flopped in an attitude more comfortable than graceful.
Shirley, too, wearying of the unfamiliar, turned to the delights of the iron wastebasket into which she tried to wedge her plump self with indifferent success and a great crackling of paper.