"That's much more possible!" the architect replied buoyantly, with a vague idea already forming that his sketches might call for a house that would cost seventy or seventy-five thousand dollars to complete.
The money matter out of the way, the widow relapsed into her friendly manner.
"I hope you can begin right away! I am so anxious to get out of this old barn, and I want to unpack all the treasures I bought in Europe the last time."
Judge Phillips would have shuddered to hear his brother's large brick house, encircled in Chicago fashion by a neat strip of grass, referred to as a "barn." And the architect, on his side, knowing something of Louise Phillips's indiscriminate taste in antiquities, was resolved to cull the "treasures" before they found a place in his edifice.
"Why, I'll begin on some sketches right away. If they please you, I could do the plans at once—just as soon as I get my own office," he added honestly. "You know I have been working for Walker, Post, and Wright. But I am going to leave them very soon."
"I am glad to hear that," Mrs. Phillips replied sympathetically. "It ought to have been so different. I think that will was disgraceful! I hope you can break it."
"I don't know that I shall try," he answered hastily, startled at the widow's cool comment on his uncle's purposes.
"Well, you know best, I suppose. But I should think a long time before I let them build that school."
"At any rate, it looks now as if I should want all the work I can get," he answered, looking into her eyes, and thinking of what Harris had told him of the G. R. and N. job. He had it on his lips to add, "Can't you say a word for me to your friend Colonel Raymond?" But he could not bring himself easily to the point of asking outright for business favors at a woman's hand. While he hesitated, not finding a phrase sufficiently delicate to express the idea, she happily saved him from the crudity of open speech.
"Perhaps I can help you in certain ways. There's something— Well, we won't begin on that to-day. But you can rest assured that I am your friend, can't you?"