The Idyl of Twin Fires Part 4

"Plane them planks down and lay a maple floor over 'em," said Hard, with an air of finality.

"Very well," said I meekly. "But my woodwork has got to be cypress in the living-room. I insist on cypress."

"New step," he added, as we came to the door up into the main house.

"Hold on!" said I. "This door leads into the front hall. I don't want that. I want this door closed up and put into the north room, which I'm going to use for a dining-room."

"Ain't goin' ter eat in the kitchen, eh? Very well," said Hard.

He examined the old door frame carefully, and jotted something in a dirty notebook, which he drew from his pocket, first wetting his flat carpenter's pencil on his tongue.

We found that the north room had apparently been used only as a kind of storage closet, doubtless because there was no heater in the house. It had never been papered, and the walls, with a little touching up, were ready for kalsomining. Hard examined the plaster with the loving eye of a connoisseur.

"Built ter last in them days," I heard him mutter.

The room extended half the depth of the house, which, to be sure, was not great. Beyond it was a second room, on the northeast corner, of the same size.

We now crossed the hall to the south side, where there were two corresponding rooms. Here, as on the other side, the chimney and fireplaces were on the inside walls, and the mantels were of a simple but very good colonial pattern, though they had been browned by smoke and time to dirt colour.

"Now I want these two rooms made into one," said I. "I want one of the doors into the hall closed up, and a gla.s.s door cut out of the south side to a pergola veranda. Can you do it?"

Hard examined the part.i.tion. He climbed on a box which we dragged in, and ripped away plaster and woodwork ruthlessly, both at the top and at places on the sides, all without speaking a word.

"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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ced, with a lot of cement showing between. I'm going to terrace it here in front, too--a gra.s.s 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."

"Ye ain't tired o' life so soon, be yer?"

"No," said I, "but I'm going to show you rubes how to treat an orchard."

Bert went off laughing, and presently I saw him driving toward town with his heavy wagon. I walked up to the plateau field to greet Mike. As I crested the ridge the field lay before me, the great, lone pine standing sentinel at the farther side; and half of it was frail, young green, and half rich, s.h.i.+ning brown.

"She ploughs tough, sor," said Mike, as the panting horses paused for breath, "but she'll harrer down good. Be the seed pertaters come yit?"

"Bert has gone for them," said I. "Let me hold the plough once."

Mike, I fancied, winked at his son Joe, who was a strong lad of twenty, with an amiable Irish grin. So everybody was regarding me as a joke!

Well, I was, even then, as strong as Mike, and I'd held a sweep, if not a plough! I picked up the handles and lifted the plough around, setting the point to the new furrow. Joe started the horses. The blade wabbled, took a mad skid for the surface, and the handles. .h.i.t me a blow in the ribs which knocked my breath out. Mike grinned. I set my teeth and the ploughshare, and again Joe started the horses. Putting forth all my strength I held the plough under the sod this time, but the furrow I ploughed started merrily away from the straight line, in spite of all my efforts, and began to run out into the unbroken ground to the left. I pulled the plough back again to the starting-point, and tried once more. This trip, when I reached the point where my first furrow had departed from the straight and narrow way, the cross strip of sod came over the point like a comber over a boat's bow, and the horses stopped with a jerk, while the point went down and again the handles smote me in the ribs.

"It ain't so azy as it looks," said Mike.

"I'll do it if I haven't a rib left," said I grimly.

And I did it. My first full furrow looked like the track of a snake under the influence of liquor, but I reversed the plough and came back fairly straight. I was beginning to get the hang of it. My next furrow was respectable, but not deep. But on the second return trip I ploughed her straight, and I ploughed her deep, and that without exerting nearly so much beef as on the first try. Most things are easy when you once know how.

On this return trip the sweat was starting from my forehead, and the smell of the horses and of the warm, fresh-turned earth was strong in my nostrils. I didn't look at my pine, nor think of book plates. I was proud at what I had done, and my muscles gloried in the toil. Again I swung the plough around, and drove it across the field, feeling the reluctant gra.s.s roots fighting every muscle of my arms.

"There," said I, triumphantly, "you plough all the rest as deep as that!"

"Begobs, ye'z all right!" cried Mike.

I went back again down the slope with all the joy of a small boy who has suddenly made an older boy recognize his importance. I went at once to the shed, found a rusty saw (for my pruning saws, of course, had not yet come), and descended upon the orchard. I had a couple of bulletins on pruning in my pocket, with pictures of old trees remorselessly headed down. I took a fresh look at the pictures, reread some of the text where I had marked it, and tackled the first tree, carefully repeating to myself: "Remove only a third the first year, remove only a third the first year."

This, I decided, quite naturally did not refer to dead wood. By the time I had the dead wood cut out of that first old tree, and all the water spouts removed (as I recalled my grandfather used to call them), which didn't seem necessary for new bearing wood, the poor thing began to look naked. On one side an old water spout or sucker had achieved the dignity of a limb and shot far into the air. I was up in the tree carefully heading this back and out when Bert came driving by with his wagon heaped to overflowing.

"Hi!" he called, "yer tryin' ter kill them trees entire!"

I got down and came out to the road. "You're a fine man and a true friend, Mr. Temple," said I, "but I'm going to be the doctor for this orchard. A chap's got to have _some_ say for himself, you know."

"Well, they ain't much good, anyhow, them trees," said Bert cheerfully.

We now fell to unloading the wagon. We opened up the woodsheds and storehouse behind the kitchen, stowed in the barrels of seed potatoes, the fertilizers, the various other seeds, the farm implements, sprayers, and so on. The hotbed frames and sashes were put away for future use, as it was too late to need them now. The horse hoe Bert had not been able to bring on this trip. Next we got my books and furniture into the house or shed, and tired, hot, and dirty, we drove on up the road for dinner. As we pa.s.sed the upper field, I saw that the ploughing was nearly done. The brown furrows had already lost their gloss, as my hands had already lost their whiteness.