"Yep," he said finally, "ef yer don't mind a big crossbeam showin'. She's solid oak. Yer door, though, 'll have to be double, with a beam in the middle." "Fine!" I cried. "One to go in by, one to go out. Guests please keep to the right!" "Hev ter alter yer chimney," he added, "or yer'll hev two fireplaces." "Fine again!" cried I. "A long room with two fireplaces, and a double-faced bookcase coming out at right angles between them, with two settles below it, one for each fireplace! Better than I'd dreamed!" "Suit yerself," said Hard. We next arranged tentatively for a brick veranda with a pergola top on the southern end of the house, and then went upstairs. Here the four small chambers needed little but minor repairs and plaster work, save that over the dining-room, which was to be converted into the bathroom. The great space over the kitchen was to be cut into two servants' bedrooms, with dormer windows. It already had the two windows, one to the north and one to the south, and had evidently been used as a drying-room for apples and the like. Hard figured here for some time, and then led us silently downstairs again, and through the front door. My front doorway had once been a thing of beauty, with two little panel windows at the sides, and above all, on the outside, a heavy, hand-carved broken pediment, like the top of a Governor Winthrop highboy. Hard looked at it with admiration gleaming in his eyes. "I'd ruther restore this than all the rest o' the job," he said, and his ugly, rumsoaked little face positively shone with enthusiasm. "Go ahead," said I; "only I want the new steps of brick, widely spaced, with a lot of cement showing between. I'm going to terrace it here in front, too--a grass terrace for ten feet out." "Thet's right, thet's right!" he exclaimed. "Now I'll go order the lumber, an' bring yer the estimate termorrer." "Seems to me the usual proceeding would be the other way around!" I gasped. "Well, yer want me ter do the job, don't yer? Or don't yer?" he said brusquely. "Of course, of course!" I amended hastily. "Go ahead!" Hard climbed into a broken-down wagon, and disappeared. "Don't you worry," said Bert. "I'll see he treats yer right." "It isn't that," I said sadly. "It's that I've just remembered I forgot to include any painters' bills in my own estimate." Bert looked at me in a kind of speechless pity for a moment. Then he said slowly: "Wal, I'll be swizzled! Wait till I tell maw! An' her always stickin' up fer a college education!" "Just for that, I'll show you!" cried I. "I never trimmed an apple tree in my life, but I'm going to work on this orchard, and I'm going to save it, all myself. It will be better than yours in three years." "Go to it," laughed Bert. "Come back fer dinner, though. Neow I'll drive over ter the depot an' git yer freight. They telephoned this mornin' it had come." "Good!" I cried. "You might bring me a bag of cement, too, and a gallon of carbolic acid."