"I take it"—squashing ruminatively through puddles—"I take it that the vanilla idee is kinder intricate, ain't it?—somethin' fancy and grand like a castle? Two or three cupolos, er course, and all run around with stoops and balconies; marble staircases inside." Mr. Pawket added this carelessly as one used to the larger handling of details. "High sideboards set out in silver in the dinin'-room—a reel handsome phonnygraft into the front room and statoos on the gateposts."
The architect receiving this preliminary sketch with such silent respect, Mr. Pawket gained courage and resumed:
"Wall-papers I ain't so sure about." The old farmer took out a large clasp-knife and, paring his thumb-nail, continued, somewhat loftily: "I presume that is as the lady of the house commands. Some favors blue, but there's a many as is great hands for red. I see a house once had dead animals, stuffed codfish, and shot ducks all over the wall-paper into the dinin'-room; 'twuz reel tony! As fer the yard—well, I mistrust that Willum, bein' sociable and always interested into the open air, would want circular seats around whatever trees was left standin'. Ye could paint 'em red, white, and blue, ye know. And he'd like a pond, maybe, with a white swan shovin' back and forth."
At last came the day when vans of imported laborers arrived and began quick breaking of ground and laying of foundations on Cedar Plains. Parts of the superb heating system, the installing of which was the architect's special care, numerous white bath-tubs—these things were deposited before the eyes of the excited Mr. Pawket, who, in the absence of the owner of the proposed villa, felt that he must be very vigilant in overseeing. Every day the old man appeared at Cedar Plains, boots spattered, overalls greased and clayey, making his anxious comments to the architect, who received them thoughtfully, with the air of putting all suggestions into immediate execution.
So the building of the "vanilla" proceeded, but it proceeded under the stigma of an outraged countryside. The "show-place" confidently predicted seemed not to evolve; outside of insane expenditures for heating and bathing and the sanitary care of laundry and food, there were few evidences that the villa was to be magnificent. Development after development not only puzzled the neighboring farmers, but incensed them. Men driving by "Willum's vanilla" pointed it out, tongue in cheek, with derisive whip; their women folks, veiled and taciturn, leaned forward in curious wonder to condemn silently. Such complacent agriculturists as owned "ottermobiles" came from miles away to view the thing; they halted their machines by the roadside and went in parties up through the tapering cedars to where stood the slowly rising square white walls, which they stared at with patronizing guffaws. It was the fashion for the youth of Brook Center to spend Sunday afternoons down in Cedar Plains, where among the dark trees they found the rosy trail of arbutus; where strawberries hung in the rank green grass, and where, of autumn days, wandering over the sweet stubble, they confessed to each other those innocent melancholies of beings that have never known sorrow.
On the edge of the plains where the russet path met the highway was an old well. Here the brooding boys and girls were accustomed to bring their loves and quarrels; here they hoisted the bucket from its glittering black depths, poured water on tight bunches of anemone, fern, and Dutchman's breeches, took long, gasping country drinks, and played all the pranks youth plays when relaxed beside its subtle, laughing ally—water. As the Sunday sun went down the boys and girls discussed the strange phenomenon of the new house whose enigmatic walls gleamed through the fields of their once free rovings. They uttered dark hearsay: "Some says them two is crazy; that's why they been chased out er It'ly." The twins, playing stick-knife in the soft turf that edged the road, flatly contradicted this:
"They are not crazy, neither; they 'm as common sense as you are."
"Well, ef they ain't crazy, why they goin' to have stone floors? Why they got them big old stone jars that come yesterday? Why ain't they goin' to have no stair carpets? Why ain't they goin' to have no window-curtings?"
"They are, too, crazy, and they gone and built that old vanilla right on where we used to pick checkerberries, and he's goin' to put a outlandish Dago top right on this here well, the kind they have in It'ly where they all wear rags and eat lemon-skins."
"Nobody won't keep me from drinkin' out of this well when it's got a Dago top."