Meantime no letters passed between the lovers save one note from Undine written in high spirits on the train to Albany. Matt had intended to go to Greenford every second Sunday during the summer, to report progress and keep the slightly unsteady flame of her affection from going out. The Albany visit put a stop to that, of course, and he felt a little helpless as the weeks ran by. He had not the pen of a ready writer, and Undine had once said playfully that she was a bad correspondent and didn't intend to touch either pen or pencil in vacation. Finally Matt spent two hours of strenuous work with the dictionary and wrote to his beloved in Greenford with directions to forward the missive if she were not there. It was a letter that would have melted a heart of stone, though viewed as a composition she would have marked it C4.
Then he plunged into the improvements again. His mother wrote approval of the samples of wall-paper he had sent her, and thanked him for selecting the little gray trellis pattern with pink roses on it for her own bedroom, advising him not to work too hard, for Maria Snow had written he was looking pale.
"I hope he'll look paler still," thought the crafty old lady, "for that'll mean he can't get that water-sprite to marry him, and he'll take sick and want me to come home to nurse him!"
He showed no signs of "taking sick" however, and it seemed, in his frenzy for improvements, that the Evil One had selected him as a victim. The color of the new paint on the house did not please a single inhabitant of the village, and what was even more regrettable, it did not suit Matthew himself. It was far too green, and the bright yellow blinds suggested by the artist who was doing the work, were felt by all to be a public insult. The fence, too, had to be of the same colors, either separate or mixed, as there was plenty of paint for the purpose, and the scenery in the vicinity, on a bright day in late August, sank into insignificance as compared with the Milliken premises when finished. The misguided youth had screened in the little piazza with wire netting and put a high-power electric bulb in the ceiling.
"He ain't intendin' to do no courtin' there, that's one thing certain," said Maria Snow. "I guess he's goin' to read the Portland papers out loud to Undine summer evenin's. He's planned light enough to see the small print in the telephone directory."
He took out the beautiful Colonial front door with the fanlight over it, always greatly admired by summer visitors, and installed one of stained pine with a large square of glass in it adorned with inside curtains of Nottingham lace tied back with yellow ribbons. That was Maria Snow's idea.
"It looks dressy," she said, "and if you're goin' to keep up with the procession, you've got to keep up, that's all; though I do think, Matthew, you might have left your grandfather's stone steps, if only for the sake of the old toad that's lived under 'em for fifty years to my certain knowledge."
The stone steps were worn and chipped, however, and had settled down on one side, while the path to the front door was not the kind suitable for high-heeled slippered feet, so steps and walk were changed to cement, smooth, dry, and hideously inappropriate to the little farmhouse.
"There's folks say you're goin' to be married, Matt, with all these improvements," said Bill one day.
"Well, mebbe I be," Matt said laconically, "and mebbe mother and me are goin' to take boarders. The neighbors can take their choice."