enture very modestly, "Hard-wood floors?"

"In the music-room, of course," consented the architect.

"And in the drawing-room?"

"Carpet. Some sort of moquette, I should say. But I should prefer to
consult Mrs. Lapham's taste in that matter."

"And in the other rooms?"

"Oh, carpets, of course."

"And what about the stairs?"

"Carpet. And I should have the rail and banisters white--banisters
turned or twisted."

The Colonel said under his breath, "Well, I'm dumned!" but he gave no
utterance to his astonishment in the architect's presence. When he
went at last,--the session did not end till eleven o'clock,--Lapham
said, "Well, Pert, I guess that fellow's fifty years behind, or ten
years ahead. I wonder what the Ongpeer style is?"

"I don't know. I hated to ask. But he seemed to understand what he
was talking about. I declare, he knows what a woman wants in a house
better than she does herself."

"And a man's simply nowhere in comparison," said Lapham. But he
respected a fellow who could beat him at every point, and have a reason
ready, as this architect had; and when he recovered from the daze into
which the complete upheaval of all his preconceived notions had left
him, he was in a fit state to swear by the architect. It seemed to him
that he had discovered the fellow (as he always called him) and owned
him now, and the fellow did nothing to disturb this impression. He
entered into that brief but intense intimacy with the Laphams which the
sympathetic architect holds with his clients. He was privy to all
their differences of opinion and all their disputes about the house.
He knew just where to insist upon his own ideas, and where to yield.
He was really building several other houses, but he gave the Laphams
the impression that he was doing none but theirs.

The work was not begun till the frost was thoroughly out of the ground,
which that year was not before the end of April. Even then it did not
proceed very rapidly. Lapham said they might as well take their time
to it; if they got the walls up and the thing closed in before the snow
flew, they could be working at it all winter. It was found necessary
to dig for the kitchen; at that point the original salt-marsh lay near
the surface, and before they began to put in the piles for the
foundation they had to pump. The neighbourhood smelt like the hold of
a ship after a three years' voyage. People who had cast their fortunes
with the New Land w