Will and I literally laboured over those plans. They had to undergo a dreadful series of operations. Every spring when it seemed to us as if we couldn't endure another summer cooped up in our noisy, stone-paved, double-electric-car-tracked street, I'd haul down the architect's blue-prints and stretch them out on a card-table. We amputated so much from those plans I wondered they held together. Of course the shower-baths and the garage, oak floors, and a superfluous bathroom came off as easily as fingers; but when we began cutting out partitions here and there, a treasured fireplace or two, two closets, and even the back stairs, I tell you it was ticklish! Even when we'd shaved off two feet from the length of the living-room, four from the dining-room, and squeezed our hall so that it was only nine feet wide, even then we couldn't find a generous-hearted builder who would even try to be reasonable in his charges.
Our house wasn't, by the way, anything like the fish man's. It wasn't a plaster house with light green blinds, with half-moons cut in them. It seemed to our architect (and to me too, as soon as he suggested it) that the most New England type of house possible—flat-faced, clapboarded, painted white, a hall in the centre and a room on each side, would fit in with those apple-trees better than anything quaint or original. Oh, ours was just the housiest house possible, with nothing odd about it like oriel windows, or diamond trellises, or unexpected bays and swells.
The first day the plans arrived I did some measuring, and cut out of cardboard on the same scale as the plans, patterns of our furniture. That night Will and I moved into our paper house, shoving the furniture around the rooms with lightning speed, shifting hall-clocks, davenports, and grand pianos from parlour to bedroom with surprising little effort. Why, I rearranged my rooms time and time again before I ever stepped foot in them. If you'll believe me, I made a complete new bedroom set for the nursery, and a little crib which I placed between the windows, when the real room was only a square block of air above the apple-trees.
You can imagine how excited we were when at the end of three years we finally signed the contract with McManus & Mann, Contractors and Builders. We were simply house-crazy by that time. I wanted to celebrate the important occasion somehow, so I went down to Mr. McManus's office and ordered several bundles of six-foot-length laths, such as are used in plastering a room, to be sent up to our lot on Saturday morning. Will and I always spend Saturday afternoons together, and, provided with the roll of plans, a yard-stick, a hatchet and my lunch-basket packed with tea and sandwiches, we started out about two P. M. to lay out our house, life size, with the laths on the very spot where it was so soon now to stand. By five o'clock I was serving tea before the fireplace in the living-room, and apple-blossom petals were blowing through the kitchen and hall partitions into the very cream-pitcher by my side.
It was just when the water over my alcohol stove had begun to boil that our first guests arrived. Dr. Van Breeze is married now, and his wife, Alice, and I are very good friends. For the three years that Will and I had been working on house-plans she had followed the changes in them as if they were hers. So I 'phoned her that I should be delighted if she and George (George is Dr. Van Breeze) would take tea with us Saturday afternoon at four-thirty in our new house. When they appeared in their touring-car at the foot of our hill, I saw that dear Dr. Graham and Mrs. Graham were in the back seat, and I dashed through the living-room wall and down to the road to meet them. Ten minutes later the Omsteds arrived strolling up the hill from their house which is the nearest one to ours. Will had already arranged boulders for chairs around the fireplace, and my dainty little sandwiches and tiny cream puffs were laid out neatly on plates covered with fresh napkins. The tea was hot and strong and fragrant; the decorations of six trees full of apple-blossoms, lovely to behold; the illumination of a pink and blue sunset, reflected in the lake below, more beautiful than a hundred electric lights.
After we had drank tea and eaten the last cream puff, I invited my guests to inspect the house. Every one entered into my little game. Dr. Omsted made us all respect the partitions as if they existed; George Van Breeze insisted on walking up the front stairs; and dear Dr. Graham found a grasshopper somewhere and exclaimed chuckling, "Oh, my dear Pandora" (he still calls me that silly name), "what of your housekeeping? I saw dozens of these in your pantry!"
Oh, it was just the nicest house-warming in the world. I like every one of Will's friends; they may be awfully learned, but they seem just plain natural and unpretentious to me. They stayed until nearly six o'clock. We waved them good-bye from our front door. When they all had disappeared over the brow of the hill, Will drew me into our hall and kissed me, just as if there had really been walls. Then he came into the living-room and helped me clear up.
I haven't mentioned yet the thorn I keep hidden in my heart and carry everywhere I go. I don't like to talk of it because Will doesn't like to have me, but it robs every joy I have of completeness. As Will and I strolled home that night perhaps we ought to have been very happy. We had the best and pleasantest friends in the world—I granted it; ground for our dream-house was to be broken on Monday morning; we had been married four years, and loved each other more than ever.
"Oh, Will, four years—four long years," I exclaimed, and sighed.
"Pshaw," he replied, and changed the subject.