pa, where is my fireplace?"

My courage returned. "It shall be built if I have to import a mason from
Chicago," I declared, and returned to the campaign.

"Can't you build a thing like this?" I asked a plasterer, showing him a
magazine picture of a fireplace.

He studied it with care, turning it from side to side. "A rough pile o'
brick like that?"

"Just like that."

"Common red brick?"

"Yes, just the kind you use for outside walls."

"If you'll get a carpenter to lay it out maybe I can do it," he
answered, but would fix no date for beginning the work.

Three days later when I met him on the street he looked a little
shame-faced. "I hoped you'd forgot about that fireplace," he said. "I
don't know about that job. I don't just see my way to it. However, if
you'll stand by and take all the responsibility, I'll try it."

"When can you come?"

"To-morrow," he said.

"I'll expect you."

I hastened home. I climbed to the top of the old chimney, hammer in
hand, and began the work of demolition.

The whole household became involved in the campaign. While the gardener
and my father chipped the mortar from the bricks which I threw down,
Zulime drew another plan for the arch and the hearth, and Mary Isabel
sat on the lawn, and shouted at her busy father, high in the sky.

A most distressing clutter developed. The carpenters attacked the house
like savage animals, chipping and chiseling till they opened a huge gap
from window to window, filling the room with mortar, dust and flies.
Zulime was especially appalled by the flies.

"I didn't know you had to slash into the house like that," she said.
"It's like murder."

Our neighbors hitherto vastly entertained by our urban eccentricities
expressed an intense interest in our plan for an open fire. "Do you
expect it to heat the house?" asked Mrs. Dutcher, and Aunt Maria said:
"An open fire is nice to look at, but expensive to keep going."

Sam McKinley heartily applauded. "I'm glad to hear you're going back to
the old-fashioned fireplace. They were good things to sit by. I'd like
one myself, but I never'd get my wife to consent. She says they are too
much trouble to keep in order."

At last the mason came, and together he and I laid out the ground plan
of the structure. By means of bricks disposed on the lawn I indicated
the size of the box, and then, while the carpenter crawled out through
the crevasse in the side of the house, we laid a deep foundation of
stone