“Please. The wooden box can stay upstairs.”
When everything was settled, Etienne had unharnessed his horse, fastened him to the wheel of the cart, and given the beast water and an armful of hay, they sat down to a meal in the kitchen. Manon had unearthed a bottle of red wine. She and Paul kept looking at each other, and at the different pieces of furniture in the room. There was a conspiracy of pride, of congratulation between them, a half-shy tenderness that looked and looked again. Castener was all curiosity, all questions. His eyes kept wandering up to the roof.
“You have plenty of air,” he said, “plenty of air.”
And then:
“What will you do for a ceiling?”
“I shall put in a floor there when I have finished the rest of the roof.”
“And the stairs?”
“We shall have to be satisfied with a ladder, to begin with.”
“But you will be able to go to bed. What does it matter! And some day, I suppose, you will line all the inside of the roof?”
“Canvas to begin with; wood when we can get it.”