Then the children came in, and the plans had to be brought out once more.
'It will be like a real fairy-tale castle,' said Molly, with all her father's enthusiasm. 'Look, Kitty, you and I won't have to share a bedroom any more. We shall have mamma's present room as our schoolroom. And Miss Frost has father's dressing-room as a bedroom.'
This struck them as highly amusing, and they went into peals of laughter.
'What room do I have?' asked Hal. 'Can I have the room in the tower?'
'I was thinking of putting one of the servants there,' said Henry, 'but you are welcome to it, my lad, if you want it. I believe my father used to sleep there as a boy.'
'I like it,' said Hal; 'it's the nicest room in the house. I shall do my painting up there. Why are we having a new day and night nursery? Now Kitty does lessons with Miss Frost she can eat with us in the schoolroom, can't she?'
Henry looked across at Katherine. Her head was bent over her needlework.
'You might have another little sister or brother one day,' she said.
'Oh,' said Hal.
He was not particularly interested; At any rate, at ten a nurse would have no power over him; that was one good thing. He was too old for any nursery. He leant with his chin in his hands, poring over the new plans. Yes, the old room in the tower would suit him very well. He would find a key and lock himself in, so that Miss Frost could not come and find him. He would make paintings, really large ones, and pin them on the wall, as artists did…
The workmen began on the foundations directly after Easter, and during the long, lovely summer of 1870 there was the ceaseless sound of hammering and knocking at Clonmere. Scaffolding hid the old house, and pillars, and girders. There were ladders everywhere, and heaps of stone and plaster. As the new block of the castle took shape it dwarfed the original building, which before had seemed square and stolid. The rooms lost the sun even sooner than before, because the new block jutted forward, taking all the sun that came.
'You can see,' said Henry, 'how much better we shall be in the new house. The rooms will be double the size, and so lofty. Already I feel cramped and restless in this old part of the house. I wish they would get on with the work faster.'
The children were fascinated by the progress of the building. They chased one another in and out of the rooms that had as yet no ceilings, and only half a wall, while their governess Miss Frost searched for them in vain, only to discover Molly seated at the top of a high ladder, in imminent danger of breaking her neck, or Kitty, with face and hands covered in earth, crawling from the depths of the new cellars.
Hal would watch the mixing of the cement, and dabble his hands in the wet mass of clay. And day after day Henry would walk down in the middle of the morning with the architect, who would come to Clonmere perhaps for a fortnight at a time to see how things were going, and the two men would discuss the great chimney that was inclined to spoil the appearance of the new block from the front, or the distance between two windows, or the exact height of the future front door, Henry with his head on one side and his hands in his pockets, the architect scribbling figures on a piece of paper.
Suddenly there would be too many people for Hal, and he would run up through the woods to the old summer-house, where his mother would be resting. She did not walk about much these days, she was always resting. She must have felt that he was there, because she turned her head and smiled at him.
'I rather thought there was a little boy looking at me,' she said.
He came forward, and sat down on the chair beside her.
'I've made you a painting,' he said, feeling in his pocket. 'It's of the creek, on a very rough day.'
He presented a grubby piece of paper, watching her eyes for approval with great anxiety.
It was the usual child's drawing, trees and creek all out of proportion, and the waves a nightmare size, while rain, like ink, fell from a thundercloud.
There was something about it, though, that was not pure childish effort. One tree, bent in the wind, that had life, and the colour of the sky.
'Thank you,' said Katherine. 'I am very pleased with it.'
'Is it good?' said Hal. 'If it's not truly good I shall tear it up.'
She looked at him, and took hold of his hand.
'It's quite good for your age,' she said, 'but you've chosen a difficult subject, one that even real artists would not find easy.'
Hal bit his nails, and frowned at the picture.
'I like painting more than any other thing,' he said, 'but if I can't paint better than other people I'd rather not paint at all.'
'That's a wrong way to think,' said Katherine.
'That way of thinking makes a person narrow, and envious, and unhappy. There will always be people in the world who will do things better than you do them. All you have to think about is to do the best you can.'
'It's not that I mind what people say,' said Hal, 'but I want to have the feeling inside me that what I do is good. If I think it's bad it makes me miserable.'
Katherine put her arm round him, and held him close.
'Go on making your drawings,' she said, 'and make them because you are happy to make them, good or bad. And then come and show them to me, darling, and we will discuss them together.'
So the summer passed, and autumn came again, and by the New Year, the architect promised, the new wing would be habitable. Already the roof and the walls were built, and the floors were laid. The partitions between the rooms were under construction. The great stairway led from the big hall to the gallery above, and Henry, with Katherine on his arm, would point out the places where they would hang their pictures. The children ran along the corridors, calling to one another, their voices echoing to the lofty ceiling.
'You are going to like it, aren't you?' said Henry anxiously. 'The whole thing has been planned for you, you know that, don't you?'
Again and again he would take her through the rooms, pointing out the excellence of the fireplace in the drawing-room, the useful size of the new library, where they could house all the books he had never had room for before. Best of all he liked to show hex the boudoir, and the little balcony outside it.
'You can lie in your chair here in the summer,' he said. 'That is why I purposely ordered the long windows, so that the chair can be moved in and out. And in the winter you can sit here, by your fire. When I want you I shall come and stand below, and throw stones up at the window.'
Katherine smiled, and, standing on the balcony, looked out across the creek to Hungry Hill.
'Yes,' she said, 'it's just what I have always wanted.'
He put his arm round her, and they stood together, watching the workmen below.
'In the New Year, when you are up and about again,' he said, 'we will take three or four months abroad, in Italy and France, and we'll buy everything we fall in love with, furniture and pictures. I want a Botticelli Madonna for the head of the staircase, and there's another fellow, Filippo Lippi, who painted a Madonna exactly like you. It hung above an old altar in a church in Florence, do you remember, we saw it together, the year after Hal was born? We might have nothing but primitives in the gallery, and then, if you fancy them, you shall have your moderns in your boudoir.'
'I'm afraid Henry is going to spend a vast amount of money.'
'Henry wants his home to be as beautiful as his wife. I must have the best there is of everything, for my wife, for my house, for my children. Perfection or nothing. No middle course.'
'Very dangerous,' smiled Katherine, 'and only leads to disillusion. Hal has the same idea, I'm afraid, and he will suffer many disappointments because of it.'
In the middle of December Henry had to be away in Slane for four days, for the Assizes, and on the third day, on returning to his hotel from the court-house, he found Tom Callaghan waiting for him in the lounge.
'What's the Rector of Doonhaven doing in Slane?' he asked, with a laugh. 'You've not come to be a witness in the case of assault, have you? Come and have some dinner.'
'No, thanks, old fellow. I've come to bring you home.'
'What's the matter?' He seized hold of Tom's arm. 'Is it Katherine?'
'She had a bit of a chill yesterday morning,' said Tom, 'and rather foolishly got up, and walked in the garden with the children. By the evening it was worse, and Miss Frost called in the doctor. At any rate, he seems to think
