12 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
as he should, and threatens to throw up 
the job if it isn’t allowed. The architect 
tries to get him down a bit, but Mr. Com¬ 
muter is scared, knowing that the next bid 
was twelve hundred higher, and he allows 
the extra, against the architect’s advice. 
About the time the foundations are fin¬ 
ished, they decide to make the porch 2' 
wider, and extend it across the whole front 
and one end, instead of being only half the 
front, as it was at first. So the same per¬ 
formance is gone through again. By this 
time Mr. Commuter has lost all faith in his 
architect. Why, here’s nothing done, hard¬ 
ly, and nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of 
extras ! Where’s all this going to end ? 
But the house begins to look better to 
him when the walls are half up, and every 
Saturday afternoon and Sunday they go 
around to look at it, and now and then Mr. 
Commuter comes home an hour earlier to 
get there before the men quit work and 
stands around in the way of the brick lay¬ 
ers—who don’t mind at all, as long as they 
are paid for not working. And it’s coming 
on finely, when finally Daughter, by a last 
magnificent onslaught, puts it over on them 
that she really must have a bathroom of her 
very, very ownest own. 
It nearly ties up the whole job, because 
there isn’t any place to put it. The inside 
of the house is as full of rooms as it can 
hold, and the only thing to do is to stick it 
out over the porch on the end. It looks 
like a sore thumb, but they can grow creep¬ 
ers over it, or something. And there isn’t 
any plumbing on that end of the house, so 
it means running a whole new plumbing 
line—which might have been avoided if 
only they’d made up their minds to it in 
the first place, and planned accordingly. 
By this time they think their troubles are 
over, when an enterprising slate salesman 
comes along, and convinces them that a 
shingle roof is such a dreadfully inflam¬ 
mable thing that it really won’t do at all, 
and that slate is the only thing. The rafters 
are in already, and have to be taken out and 
replaced by heavier ones, because they 
aren’t strong enough to stand the extra load, 
and it means paying twice over—but they 
simply wouldn’t be happy for a minute 
without it, so on it goes. 
And when the bills are finally settled, they 
find their little house has cost close to four¬ 
teen thousand, instead of the ten they in¬ 
tended to spend. And they let the builder 
have the last payments without the archi¬ 
tect’s certificate, and before the work is 
quite done, because he says how much he 
needs the money just then—and, of course, 
he leaves a lot of little things undone, and 
it costs them another couple of hundred to 
fix them up and get everything in shape. 
And then they blame the architect for it 
all. Really, you know, it isn’t fair. 
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Placed on a pedestal, this lead 
urn would make a rare con¬ 
tribution to garden loveliness. 
It is an 18th Century piece 
with -figures in low relief 
Of more recent make is the 
lead bird bath with cupids 
disporting themselves in low 
relief and en deshabille, and 
birds perched on the rim 
Cupid in the guise of 
Bacchante, an English lead 
figure of the 18th Century, 
recently imported for the 
garden of Colonel Du Pont 
at Wilmington, Delaware 
Father Tiber, a lltli Century figure, has had a 
watery career. Originally he was in Kew Gar¬ 
dens. ' About seventy years ago while being 
moved down to the city on a barge the bottom 
fell out and he sank into the mud, where he 
stayed until recovered a year or tivo ago 
Oliver Cromwell, as a Scot 
caricatured the old rip in 
lead. They cordially hated 
him in Scotland, but he is 
quite worthy of an inter¬ 
esting garden spot here 
