go."

"How be you goin' to make the top bricks stay up?" sez I, "a layin' up
on nothin'?"

"That is a man's work," sez he, "a woman couldn't understand it if I
should explain it."

"No," sez I, "Heaven knows no woman on earth would ever understand
that idee!"

Well, all I could do he would go that very afternoon and engage a
mason to do the work, build the chimbly after his views, beginin' on
top instead of the bottom. But though deeply mortified at it, that wuz
jest the move that sot me free from my anxieties about the house, for
the mason, who wuz a great case for a joke, made so much fun of the
idee, and of the hull structure, that my companion threw up the hull
job and told me that the house might go to----for anything he cared. I
will never tell the place he said the house might go to, it is too
wicked to even think on calmly, it begun with an H and that is all
that I will ever tell to anybody.

Well, when Whitfield and Tirzah Ann come back from Maine and went to
Shadow Island to see that strange queer lookin' buildin, I spoze
Whitfield laughed till his sides ached. Tirzah cried, they say; cried
partly out of sentiment to think her Pa had showed such affection for
her as to build the cottage, and partly because it looked so awful, it
made her hystericky.

But Whitfield sobered down, and when he come back to Jonesville acted
good to Josiah, he seemed to be real thankful to Josiah and me for
buildin' it, and his grateful, affectionate ways kinder took the edge
offen Josiah's humiliation, but then he would probable have sprunted
up anyway--mortification never prayed on him for more'n a short time.

Well, the end on't wuz, Whitfield hired a good carpenter to oversee
the work, and some strong workmen who wuz able to lift and lug, there
wuz plenty of lumber, and in four weeks the house wuz transmogrified
into a good lookin' cottage. They built on a L, I believe they called
it, which they're to use as a store room, and under that Tirzah Ann is
to have her suller, Whitfield wuzn't the man to deprive her of that
comfort. And in some way they straightened up the house, and put in a
winder here and there, tore off lots of the ornaments, but left on
some of the piazzas, and balconies, and things, and it wuz a pretty
and commogious lookin' cottage. They painted the hull concern a soft
buff color, with red ruffs that looked real picturesque settin' back
aginst the dark green of the trees.

And sure enough the first w