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Linda's Hearthstone.
Early the following week Linda came from school one evening to find a load of sand and a heap of curiously marked stones beside the back door.
"Can it possibly be, Katy," she asked, "that those men are planning to begin work on my room so soon?
I am scared out of almost seven of my five senses.

I had no idea they would be ready to begin work until after I had my settlement with Eileen or was paid for the books." "Don't ye be worried," said Katy.

"There's more in me stocking than me leg, and you're as welcome to it as the desert is welcome to rain, an' nadin' it 'most as bad." "Anyway," said Linda, "it will surely take them long enough so that I can pay by the time they finish." But Linda was not figuring that back of the projected improvements stood two men, each of whom had an extremely personal reason for greatly desiring to please her.

Peter Morrison had secured a slab of sandstone.
He had located a marble cutter to whom he meant to carry it, and was spending much thought that he might have been using on an article in trying to hit upon exactly the right line or phrase to build in above Linda's fire--something that would convey to her in a few words a sense of friendship and beauty.
While Peter gazed at the unresponsive gray sandstone and wrote line after line which he immediately destroyed, Henry Anderson explored the mountain and came in, red faced and perspiring, from miles of climbing with a bright stone in each hand, or took the car to bring in small heaps too heavy to carry that he had collected near the roads.