"That's very good," he said. "I'm an architect of Chicago. I believe I can frame it up for you."
When a thing happens like that, I invariably draw the suspicion that it was intended to be so. Anyway, I had to have plans.... When they came from Chicago, I shoved the date of building ahead to Nineteen-Thirty, and turned with a sigh to the typewriter.... Several days afterward there was a tap at the study door in the drowsiest part of the afternoon. A contractor and his friend, the lumberman, were interested to know if I contemplated building. Very positively I said not—so positively that the subject was changed. The next day I met the contractor, who said he was sorry to hear of my decision, since the lumberman had come with the idea of financing the stone house, but was a bit delicate about it, the way I spoke.
This was information of the most obtruding sort.... One of my well-trusted friends once said to me, looking up from a work-bench in his own cellar:
"When I started to build I went in debt just as far as they would let me."
He had one of the prettiest places I ever saw—of a poor man's kind, and spent all the best hours of his life making it lovelier.
"And it's all paid for?" I asked.
He smiled. "No—not by a good deal less than half."
"But suppose something should happen that you couldn't finish paying for it?"
"Well, then I've had a mighty good time doing it for the other fellow."
That was not to be forgotten.