"What say?" her son returned. He was again regarding the rectangular patterns on his page, in some dissatisfaction and yet with pleasure, too. It was the look of one who makes. "What under the sun you doin' of?" asked the old lady. "What you rulin' off? Makes me as nervous as a witch." Elihu laid down his paper from that removed survey and leaned back in his chair. It seemed to add some richness to his task to have it noticed. "Well," said he, "there's goin' to be a town meetin' next Wednesday, to take a vote on that money Judge Green left for the Old Folks' Home." "Yes, yes," said his mother. "I know that. Come, hurry up. This candle's in a draught." "Well," said Elihu, "we've talked it over, more or less, most on us, and we've come to the conclusion it's only a bill o' cost to go hirin' city architects to plan out the job. All we want's a good square house, and I thought I'd draw out a plan o' one and submit it to the meetin'." "O Elihu!" said Amarita, in a tone of generous awe. "You think you could?" "Think?" said Elihu. "No, I don't think. I know it. Mebbe I couldn't draw out a house with cubelows and piazzas and jogs and the like o' that, but that ain't what we've got in mind. It's a good old-fashioned house, and I s'pose any man of us could do it, only nobody's got the nerve to try. So I took it into my head to be the one." "Well," said his mother skeptically, "mebbe you can an' mebbe you can't. Good-night, all." But Amarita leaned forward across the table, her eager eyes upon the paper. She had forgotten her resentment. It was happiness to her to see Elihu doing what he liked and succeeding in it. "O Elihu," said she, "show it to me, won't you? Tell me what the rooms are." But he was rolling up his work. "No," he said; "wait till I get a little further along. Then I will. I'm going to the street and buy me a sheet or two o' cardboard to-morrer." But they talked cozily about it for a half-hour, and when Elihu rose to wind the clock they were both convinced that he was a great man indeed. All that week Elihu worked over his plan, and when he had at last set it accurately down on the cover of a bandbox, as a preliminary to drafting it out fair and large, he showed it to his wife. They had put their heads together over it at the table, when Elihu caught sight of Simeon Eldridge bringing him a cord of pine limbs. "You wait a minute," he adjured Amarita. "I got to help him unload. I'll show it to you when I come in." But Amarita pored over it by herself, and old Mis' Meade, at the window, knit and watched for the passing. It was a bright day, and it seemed reasonable that at least two wagons might go by. "Don't you want I should bring it over there," said Amarita, at length, "and let you look at it?" "Law, no!" old Mis' Meade responded, with the ruthlessness of one whose mind is not on futures. "I guess I can wait till they've begun to hew out their underpinnin'." "Ain't it remarkable he can do a thing like that?"