HOUSE AND GARDEN 
February^ 1912 
temper. His pride had been stepped on and on a subject that 
hurt. 
‘‘Is that so?’’ he said slowly, and taking the bottle out he broke 
it against a rafter. “We’ll see about that!’’ 
It was just the result that Mantell had hoped for. The incident 
was closed, and so was Raffles’ connection with the cause of it, 
but the germs of the greenhouse disease, however, had been 
thoroughly planted and everyone caught it. 
The photographer’s place was ransacked for all the old plates 
he could spare. These were 8 x 10" in size, and there were four 
hundred of them. The job of cleaning them was no fun. How¬ 
ever, Mrs. Mantell’s suggestion of doing a certain number each 
night, after cleaning up the kitchen work, reduced the task to a 
minimum. 
Raffles made a sketch of 
the proposed house. They 
found an ideal location 
for it south of the batn — 
a regular cozy - corner 
which furnished their 
north wall ready made. 
Estimates showed, how¬ 
ever, that they needed at 
least 552 square feet of 
glass, while the amount 
purchased so far came to 
only 460, and the pho¬ 
tographer said he had to 
take photographs for at 
least a year more before 
being able to supply them 
with the balance. 
Squire Hunderson had 
laughed for two days 
when he first heard of the 
proposed greenhouse. 
“Going to — to set it 
on top of the frozen 
ground ?” he inquired, 
scoffingly — to the extent, 
that is, that it was possible 
for him to scofif 1 “Going 
to have Christmas roses 
blooming in the snow ? 
It is ridiculous, sir! No 
one ’round here ever 
heard of such a thing.” 
A few days afterward, 
however, he stopped and 
took Mr. Mantell off to 
town, on one of his dark 
trips. He had hunted up 
a contractor, from whom 
Mantell could get quite a 
lot of second-hand glass, 
in old windows, at a cent 
a light. And they got at 
this place also twenty-five second-hand cellar windows 14" x 24" 
at ten cents each with the glass intact, and an old glass door for 
twenty-five cents. 
Raffles was very much pleased with these things, and at once 
carefully drew up a plan for his greenhouse. He called Mr. Man- 
tell’s attention to the fact that building it in this way they would 
get a great deal of “bench space” with a minimum of material. 
In the first, place, the back wall was already erected. In the 
second, the arrangement of the benches and beds was such that it 
actually gave them more than the total floor space of the house. 
including the paths, and without throwing any parts in shade; 
and thirdly, they had the benefit of having both raised benches 
and solid beds, a distinct advantage for the general purpose work 
they had in view. And there was in addition the simplicity of the 
heating problem, as the pipes for hot water, which Raffles ex¬ 
pected to use, crossed the path at only one point, and that where 
they could go below it, as it would be at the lowest point of the 
system. The posts they cut in the woods and had sawed out at 
the mill. Squire Hunderson himself proposed swapping some of 
his dry pine lumber for green timber, so that they could get 
dry material that would not warp and have it sawed and milled 
into the shapes they wanted at the sash and blind shop in 
Priestly. So this good advice was acted on accordingly. 
Raffles had already sub¬ 
scribed for a weekly flor¬ 
ists’ paper, and sent for a 
number of greenhouse 
material catalogues. From 
these he got a great many 
good suggestions at the 
cost of three or four post¬ 
age stamps. He finally 
ordered a few iron fittings 
and twenty-nine thirteen- 
foot “sash-bars,” and two 
“end bars’’ of cypress. 
These cost about the same 
as the local mill would 
have charged merely for 
turning them out, with the 
material furnished. In¬ 
cluding the freight these 
cost him thirty cents each. 
The different materials 
were gradually gathered 
together, not without diffi¬ 
culty, and not without ex¬ 
citing the curiosity of 
passersby. Such “goings- 
on,” especially on the part 
of a newcomer—and a 
“city bug” at that—did 
not go unchallenged. On 
more than one occasion 
was Mantell hailed, when 
he chanced to be near the 
barn, and cross-examined 
by a doubting native; and 
his crazy schemes fur¬ 
nished a nocturnal theme 
for the old-timers at the 
Priestly Junction store. 
And it must be confessed 
that Squire Hunderson 
took a secret pleasure in 
throwing out hints that 
made things worse than 
they were, and which, of course, became more and more exag¬ 
gerated as they were passed on, especially as it was very seldom 
that any member of the Mantell household was present to correct 
or contradict any statement made. One interested neighbor (that 
is, he lived within five miles of Mantell) wanted to know if it 
were true that he was going to put up a big hothouse and grow 
roses for some of the “swell set” in New York (from which the 
Mantells were popularly supposed to have dropped) ; and another 
asked if he really thought it would pay him to grow “truck” to 
{Continued on page 53) 
..'V 
The following morning found the hill and forest covered with a four-inch blanket 
of snow 
