‘She is wus than a slave-driver,’ the man said to Harold one day.  ’Why, if ever I stop to take a chair, or rest my bones a bit, she’s after me in a jiffy, and asks if I don’t think I can get so much done in an hour if I work as tight as I can clip it.  I was never so druv in my life.’

And yet both the man and Harold liked to see the little lady there, walking through the shavings, and holding high her dainty skirts as she clambered over piles of boards and shingles, or perching herself on the work bench, superintended them both, and twice by her intervention saved a door from swinging the wrong way, and from being a little askew.

Mrs. Tracy was greatly opposed to Maude’s going so often to the cottage, wondering what pleasure she could find in seeing an old house repaired, and predicting that she would make herself sick.  But Maude was headstrong and would have her way, especially as her father did not object, but himself took her frequently to the cottage.  Frank was almost as much interested in the work as she was, and once offered his services, as did Dick St. Claire and Billy Peterkin.

‘That’s splendid.  We’ll have a bee, and get a lot done,’ Maude said; and she pressed into the bee her father and Dick, and Billy, and Fred Raymond, and Tom, the latter of whom did nothing but find fault, saying that the ceiling ought to have been of different woods, the floor inlaid, and the tops of the windows cathedral glass.

‘And I suppose you will find the money for all that elegance,’ Maude said, as she held one end of a board for Harold to nail.  ’We are cutting our garment according to the cloth, and if you don’t like it you’d better go away.  We do not want any drones in the hive, do we, Hally?’

’She had taken to address him thus familiarly since they had commenced their carpenter work together, and Harold smiled brightly upon her as upon a child, as she stood on tip-toe at his side.

Tom went away, but he soon came back again; for there was for him a peculiar fascination about this room for Jerrie, and sitting down upon a saw-horse, he looked on, and whittled, and smoked, while Dick blistered his hands, and Fred raised a blood-blister by striking his finger with the hammer, and Billy ran a huge splinter under his thumb nail.

Then they all went away, and Harold was left alone, for his man had been obliged to leave, and thus the finishing up devolved upon him.  But he was equal to it.  The worst was over, and all that was now required was hard and constant work if he would accomplish it in time to see Jerrie graduated, as he greatly wished to do, provided he should have money enough left for the trip when everything was paid for.