blameless, having very much the air of being just arrived; but could my
ears deceive me? Then up spake I, cheerily, "O Halicarnassus, you are
just in time to hold this board steady while I hammer it on,"--as if I
had that moment adjusted it for the first time. He took his stand under
the ladder, and held on as I told him, with a beautiful docility. I did
not hurry in selecting a nail; for he was strong, and I thought it would
do him good to be in an uncomfortable position a little while,
particularly as I was not quite satisfied about the--half-suppressed,
broken laugh (definition of _snicker_ given by "The Best").

Carpentering was far easier after this, yet progress was not what you
could call rapid. The ladder was short, and I had to reach up painfully;
but I should not mind my arms aching, I informed my companion, if it
were not, that, having to look up so, all the splinters and dust and
_debris_ that my hammer struck from the old boards marched straight into
my eyes.

"You might keep your eyes shut," suggested he.

"But then," I responded, "I could not see how to strike."

"Never mind," said he, tenderly; "you would hit just as well."

"Oh, that way madness lies!"

The upshot of it was, that H. bestirred himself, and turned that barn
into a marvel of art. It had been a barn: it became a villa. An immense
wooden sarcophagus,--only nobody had ever been deposited in it,--perhaps
it was a horse-trough,--he set up "on end," and made a three-story house
of it. Fresh, sweet-smelling hay he piled on each floor, and scooped out
such attractive little nests that a hen of a domestic turn of mind would
go there and lay, just for the fun of it, you might suppose. Then the
porticos, and the palisades, and the sliding-doors, and the galleries,
and the hospital, and the vistas, and the inner and outer courts, every
arrangement that heart of hen could wish, both for seclusion and for
society,--why, those fowls might have dreamt they dwelt in marble halls
every night of their lives, and not have been very far out of the way.
And the summer residences that he made for them,--little Gothic cottages
built for a single family, with all the modern conveniences, and a good
many more improvised on the spot, and with this signal advantage over
similar structures at Newport and Nahant,--that you can take them under
your arm, and carry them wherever you please.

Before finally leaving my hen-coop, will a generous public pardon me f