.

"Elihu!"

"What say?" her son returned. He was again regarding the rectangular
patterns on his page, in some dissatisfaction and yet with pleasure,
too. It was the look of one who makes.

"What under the sun you doin' of?" asked the old lady. "What you rulin'
off? Makes me as nervous as a witch."

Elihu laid down his paper from that removed survey and leaned back in
his chair. It seemed to add some richness to his task to have it
noticed.

"Well," said he, "there's goin' to be a town meetin' next Wednesday, to
take a vote on that money Judge Green left for the Old Folks' Home."

"Yes, yes," said his mother. "I know that. Come, hurry up. This candle's
in a draught."

"Well," said Elihu, "we've talked it over, more or less, most on us, and
we've come to the conclusion it's only a bill o' cost to go hirin' city
architects to plan out the job. All we want's a good square house, and I
thought I'd draw out a plan o' one and submit it to the meetin'."

"O Elihu!" said Amarita, in a tone of generous awe. "You think you
could?"

"Think?" said Elihu. "No, I don't think. I know it. Mebbe I couldn't
draw out a house with cubelows and piazzas and jogs and the like o'
that, but that ain't what we've got in mind. It's a good old-fashioned
house, and I s'pose any man of us could do it, only nobody's got the
nerve to try. So I took it into my head to be the one."

"Well," said his mother skeptically, "mebbe you can an' mebbe you can't.
Good-night, all."

But Amarita leaned forward across the table, her eager eyes upon the
paper. She had forgotten her resentment. It was happiness to her to see
Elihu doing what he liked and succeeding in it.

"O Elihu," said she, "show it to me, won't you? Tell me what the rooms
are."

But he was rolling up his work.

"No," he said; "wait till I get a little further along. Then I will. I'm
going to the street and buy me a sheet or two o' cardboard to-morrer."

But they talked cozily about it for a half-hour, and when Elihu rose to
wind the clock they were both convinced that he was a great man indeed.

All that week Elihu worked over his plan, and when he had at last set it
accurately down on the cover of a bandbox, as a preliminary to drafting
it out fair and large, he showed it to his wife. They had put their
heads together over it at the table, when Elihu caught sight of Simeon
Eldridge bringing him a cord of pine limbs.

"You wait a minute," he adjured Amarita. "I got to help