“Oh, we have fixed all that; there’s to be deafening, a double floor and a whole lot of mortar, and we shall never hear a sound nor smell a smell, Jane is so quiet; and it will be so pleasant with a broad balcony and a door to go out. I wish you would try to have a little interest in it, John.” So I tried to be interested, but could not forbear asking her if she had the slightest conception of all it involved, this raising the roof and Cain generally; and then she cried, and the Lord part of her got the ascendant, and she said I was _mean_, and an _old fogy_, and a _conservative_, and a—well, she called me several names, and then we made it up, and I told her to fix away, and knock things endways if she wanted to, and that’s about the way matters stood Monday morning, when I said good-bye to her at half-past six and hurried to the train. She was up to see me off, the carpenters were coming at seven, and she must be ready to receive them. “You won’t know the house when you get home,” she said, “it will be so changed and improved; and if you are at all puzzled to find it, look for the very biggest and handsomest place on the street. Good-by.” She was so elated with her repairing that I do not think she was a bit sorry to have me go, and this did not console me much, or make me take any more kindly to the repairs. I did not hear from her for three or four days, and then she was in high spirits. Such nice men as the carpenters were, and such fun to superintend them: she began to think nature had intended her for a builder, or at least a designer of houses. I groaned a little for fear my hitherto quiet, satisfied Cilly should develop a propensity for building, and ruin me entirely. It was in her family on both sides, for old Mrs. Erastus Lord had ruined her husband that way, while Mrs. Erastus, junior, had sunk over twenty thousand dollars on a place which originally cost five thousand, and which when completed looked as if it had been taken up and shaken by a high wind and thrown down promiscuously. But I hoped better things of my little Cilly, and resuming her letter, read that the piazza was going up so fast, and they had not yet done a single bit of damage, except to knock a hole through one of the front door lights, and kill the ivy, which was just growing so beautifully, and which had come all the way from Kenilworth.