Her glance was almost indulgent.

“Of course, Hugh.  I want you to be satisfied, to be pleased,” she said.

“And you?” I questioned, “you are to live in the house more than I.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will turn out all right,” she replied.  “Now you’d better run along, I know you’re late.”

“I am late,” I admitted, rather lamely.  “If you don’t care for Lammerton’s drawings, we’ll get another architect.”

Several years before Mr. Lammerton had arrived among us with a Beaux Arts moustache and letters of introduction to Mrs. Durrett and others.  We found him the most adaptable, the most accommodating of young men, always ready to donate his talents and his services to private theatricals, tableaux, and fancy-dress balls, to take a place at a table at the last moment.  One of his most appealing attributes was his “belief” in our city,—­a form of patriotism that culminated, in later years, in “million population” clubs.  I have often heard him declare, when the ladies had left the dining-room, that there was positively no limit to our future growth; and, incidentally, to our future wealth.  Such sentiments as these could not fail to add to any man’s popularity, and his success was a foregone conclusion.  Almost before we knew it he was building the new Union Station of which he had foreseen the need, to take care of the millions to which our population was to be swelled; building the new Post Office that the unceasing efforts of Theodore Watling finally procured for us:  building, indeed, Nancy’s new house, the largest of our private mansions save Mr. Scherer’s, a commission that had immediately brought about others from the Dickinsons and the Berringers....  That very day I called on him in his offices at the top of one of our new buildings, where many young draftsmen were bending over their boards.  I was ushered into his private studio.

“I suppose you want something handsome, Hugh,” he said, looking at me over his cigarette, “something commensurate with these fees I hear you are getting.”

“Well, I want to be comfortable,” I admitted.

We lunched at the Club together, where we talked over the requirements.

When he came to dinner the next week and spread out his sketch on the living-room table Maude drew in her breath.

“Why, Hugh,” she exclaimed in dismay, “it’s as big as—­as big as the White House!”

“Not quite,” I answered, laughing with Archie.  “We may as well take our ease in our old age.”

“Take our ease!” echoed Maude.  “We’ll rattle ’round in it.  I’ll never get used to it.”

“After a month, Mrs. Paret, I’ll wager you’ll be wondering how you ever got along without it,” said Archie.