Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/61

, moved the big lamp nearer and opened the magazine. But Clara was busy correcting the plans for the new house; she must have the lamp light, too. Henry moved the lamp back.

"Would you have the kitchen here, or here? This way I could have windows on three sides, but the other way I'd have a larger pantry," said Clara, stopping to chew her pencil.

"Fix it exactly to suit yourself. It's your house, and I'll build it just as you say," Henry replied, turning a page.

"But I want your advice—and I can't see how to get this back porch in without making the bedrooms too small," Clara complained. "I want this house just so—and if I put the chimney where I want it to come in the kitchen, it will be in the wrong end of the sitting-room, best I can do. Oh, let those horrid papers alone, and help me out!"

Henry let the horrid papers alone and bent his head over the problems of porch and pantry and fireplace.

When the pressure of spring work was over, he set to work a gang of men, cutting down selected trees in the timber lot and hauling them down to the little sawmill which belonged to his father. There he sawed them into boards of the lengths and sizes he needed and stocked them in neat piles to season and dry. From the shorter pieces of timber he split "shakes,"