An Airedale, whirling about the corner of the building with a wild flourish, leaped upon David in welcome, and immediately curled himself rapturously in the short film of the grass, with all four feet in the air, writhing in puppy ecstasies.
“Here, here, Ben!” David said, laughing. “Grow up! It’s ridiculous to see a dog of your age acting that way!”
But he was rubbing and tousling the rough head affectionately, none the less, as he called, “Etta! John!”
In answer Etta, John’s wife, appeared with an undisturbed smile. For the months of building last fall, and again this spring, Mr. David had been living in his little Keyport farmhouse and might be expected here at almost any minute to inspect and approve. Etta herself had watched so much of the re-building with secret contempt. It seemed odd, when one could afford a nice square plastered house, and a corrugated iron barn, to waste twice as much money on what John considered “monkey shines.” But Miss Gabrielle and Miss Sylvia and Mr. Tom had all been away for more than a year now, in California and Mexico and Panama, and now it was Central America, and dear knows what it’d be next, and consequently Mr. David and his friend Mr. Rucker had had it all their own way.
Etta had no objection to Mr. Rucker, who was always so kind and polite, and funny, too, if you always understood just what he meant, but she could not understand why he should drag in talk about Swedish farmhouses and Oxford.
“I don’t know anything about Oxford,” Etta had more than once commented to her husband, “but I do know that the Swedes all get here as fast as they can, and why any one’d want to bring their clumsy-looking old barns after them beats me! Mr. Rucker was showing me the pitchers in a book; ‘It looks like something a child would make with blocks, if you’d ask me!’ I told him.”
“I hope when they build a house it’s going to look decent,” John might answer, uneasily. “I don’t know what better they’d want than three stories with plenty of bay windows and porches. I seen one pitcher Mr. David had in a book with all the roofs kinder sloping down into the garden, and the windows all different sizes and levels. Mr. Rucker says he has some old leaded windows from a bar-room—that’s what he said—for the liberry. I had Davis, over to the Lumber Company, send him a catalogue, and mark all the new doors and windows with a blue pencil, but I don’t know if he got it.”
To-day David gave Etta an opportunity for criticism when he said cheerfully, as she somewhat reluctantly accompanied him about the place:
“How’s the house, Etta—comfortable?”
“Oh, we’re quite comfortable, thank you,” Etta answered, primly, in a faintly complaining tone, “and John’s got the Eyetalians engaged to start the side garden anyway before the folks get back. But here’s the thing that I’ll never get through my head,” Etta added, with the readiness of an already well-aired grievance, as she looked up at the wide archway and its casement windows above; “it don’t seem sensible to have that arch, or gate, or whatever you call it, making the barn and the house into one. As far as needing the room goes, we’ll never need it, for John would no more think of going through that way for the hay than flying over the moon. I was thinking it would look handsomer to have the barn separate—and while the men are right here, and before Miss Gabrielle gets home to look at the plans for a house, and dear knows when that will be now!—why, they could tear out that arch real easy, and smooth the brick up so that it’d never show—and it does seem as if it’d be more Christian—more like the way other places look—places like the Smiths’, over to Tinsalls, that have millions of dollars, but their house looks so neat and square——”