“Brick wall here, joining the stable wall in a long line, with the poplars back of it,” he agreed, with a suddenly cold, heavy heart. “Jim has managed to save the poplars, you see. And all the kitchen matters will be reached through a little round-topped gate in the wall about here.”
“And the dining-room windows looking out here where all the lilacs are?”
“With a sort of portico—an open court, tiled, here on the north front—where it will be cool in the afternoons.”
“David, it’s so much more wonderful than I dreamed it would be! Imagine a new Wastewater, all sunshine and happiness, instead of that terrible old barrack full of jealousy and secrets and plots! Isn’t it like a fairy tale? To think that life can be so sweet——”
“Gay, there’s no sweetness that you don’t deserve,” David said, suddenly, as they followed the others. “After that defrauded childhood, and all the shocks and sorrows you had when you first came home two years ago, nothing could be too much!”
“I feel now,” the girl answered, seriously, “as if, on that last night of fire and horror and bewilderment, the whole dreadful thing had been burned out—cauterized, made clean once and for all, and that now we start with a new order!”
“I don’t know as there’s a prettier place anywhere than Browns’,” said Etta’s mildly complaining voice. “If she has one window she has a hundred——”
“Etta!” Gabrielle said, briskly, paying no attention, “have you some chops? Mr. David and I are going to have our lunch down on the shore. And will you make us some coffee, Etta, and give us matches and butter and all the rest of it? It’s half-past eleven now, and we’ll want to start about one.—Now, show me everything, David, and tell me ten thousand things about everything!”
“John, have you those blue-prints?” David, out of whose sky the sun had dropped leaving everything dark and gray, asked the foreman.
“The plans for the house that looks sorter slumped down, with the roof two stories deep?” John asked, as one anxious to coöperate intelligently.