n'
them pesky mossback shingles; then I may go with the tide and buy me a
fancy tin roof."

Mr. Badgely would sweep him with an unseeing look. He would stretch five
very long fingers toward the facade of the farm-house, muttering, "Of
course not the dormers; they obtrude, I think, and the note is
pseudo-foreign. We should try to evolve something absolutely American,
don't you think? But the pilasters, the door paneling, positively Doric
in their clean sobriety! The eastern development, now; there may have
been reason for the extreme slant toward the east--it orients well, but
with a certain shock...."

"Shock? I guess yes," Mr. Pawket would reply. "'Twuz struck by
lightnin', tore down considerable." Then Mr. Pawket would remember that
Willum had asked him to be all the help he could to the architect, so he
would cast his eyes up to the sun as one who dovetails multitudinous
engagements, remarking: "What say we go down to Cedar Plains now? Fool
around a little. Kindy block the thing all out, as it were."

Once Mr. Pawket had added, "Ef we can't do nothin' else, you can tell me
ef you want any of them trees left a-standin'."

The dreaming architect had turned on him like one under sudden electric
compulsion; he shook himself into unbelievable alertness.

"The--er--trees? Left standing?"

Mr. Pawket smiled indulgently. He scratched a match on the seat of his
overalls and lighted his pipe, answering between puffs: "I guess you 'm
new to the business, ain't ye? Don't ye know, boy, the fust thing ye do
when ye set out to build a house is to lay all the trees low? Some does
it with dunnamite; some does it with mules and swearin'--anything to
root out the pesky things."

An extraordinary look of terror had swept the architect's face.

"Nervous," noted Mr. Pawket, "nervous! Maw'll have to feed him up with
buttermilk and put drops into his coffee. Them city people is always
nagged into nerves." The old man continued in fatherly fashion:

"Now, you wantin' to make all clear for anything as sizable as a
vanilla, fust thing we do is to 'scratch off the trees.' I can git you
plenty fellers handy with ax and saw, but when it comes to them cussed
roots, why, then, you 'm goin' to want dunnamite."

The architect bowed his head thoughtfully. As the two took the little
bronzed path leading to the natural park-land dark with tapering cedars,
he gave a puzzled look at the old farmer. At last he seemed struck by an
idea and said,