Christian fiction; Families -- Fiction; Love stories
And, sure enough, there stood a stately stone mansion on a wide green
terrace, where shrubs and small trees were grouped fittingly about,
erasing all signs of the old pasture-land; and the old grassy incline
to the door now rolled away in velvety lawn on either side of a smooth
cement walk bordered with vivid scarlet geraniums. Trailing vines and
autumn flowers were blossoming in jars on the wide stone railing. The
old barn door had been replaced by glass which gave a glimpse of
strange new rooms beyond, and the roof had broken forth in charming
colonial dormer windows like a new French hat on a head that had worn
the same old poke bonnet for years. No wonder Doris didn't recognize
the dear old barn. It did seem as though a wizard had worked magic
upon it. How was one to know that only a brief half-hour before the
old gardener from the Graham estate set the last geranium in the row
along the walk, and trailed the last vine over the stone wall; or that
even now the corps of men who had been hastily laying and patting the
turf in place over the terrace were in hiding down in the basement,
with their wheelbarrows and picks and spades, having beat a hasty
retreat at the sound of the car coming, and were only waiting till they
could get away unobserved? For orders were orders, and the orders were
that the work was to be _done_ and every man out of sight by the time
they arrived. A bonus to every man if the orders were obeyed. That is
what money and influence can do in a month!
In due time they got themselves out of that car in a sort of bewildered
daze and walked up the new cement path, feeling strangely like
intruders as they met the bright stare of the geraniums.
They walked the length of the new piazza in delight. They exclaimed
and started and smiled and almost wept in one another's arms. Graham
stood and watched Shirley's happy face and was satisfied.
The first thing Doris did when she got inside the lovely glass door was
to start to run for her own little willow chair and her own little old
rag doll that had been left behind, and down she went on the slippery
floor. And there, behold, the old barn floors too had disappeared
under a coating of simple matched hardwood flooring, oiled and polished
smoothly, and Doris was not expecting it.
She got up quickly, half ashamed, and looked around laughing.
"I vas skating!" she declared with a ringing laugh. "I skated yite
down on mine nose."
Then she hurried more cautiously to the haven of her own chair, and
with her old doll hugged to her breast she reiterated over and over as
if to reassure herself: "Mine! Doris! Mine! Doris!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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