Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/53

42 of course you won't have to bother with that; you'll be in the offices."

"No," said Floyd. "I'm going through the whole thing."

"Stripped to the waist and broiling at a furnace!" exclaimed Stewart. "Well, it seems like martyrdom to me."

"It won't be that, for it will be interesting," Floyd answered. "If you'd gone in for athletics more, Stewart, you'd know what fun it is, when you're stripped for it, to get tired and blown and knocked around. And here you add to that, the fun of making something."

Stewart shook his head.

"You wait," he said. "Your hands will be black and greasy from one year's end to another; you can't get them clean; you'll have to go to meals with dirty hands; it seems a trifle, but I should go nutty like Lady Macbeth if all the scrubbing in the world could n't make my hands clean. What's the use anyway of working! How much better just to keep moving round and round the world, following the spring!"

"Is that what you mean to do?" asked Floyd.

"Oh, I have a streak of New England conscience. I'm going to study architecture. I don't know where I shall settle down." After a pause he added, "I think Avalon might be a good place."

"You were out there a year ago."

"Yes." Stewart plucked a bunch of grasses and wound them round his finger. "I—I thought of letting you know—of looking you up. And then I felt it might be awkward for you—as well as for me—considering everything. Lydia thought it was queer; she wanted to have you at a dinner party—I was staying at her house—and when she asked me about you, I had to tell her—well, that it was all off and my fault. 'Then we'll have him round and you can make it up,' she said. But I said no, it was just one of those things that could n't be helped,