Thankful's Inheritance by Joseph C. Lincoln

The August days were busy ones at the High Cliff House. Every room was filled and the tables in the dining-room well crowded. Thankful told Captain Bangs that she could not spare time even to look out of the window. "And yet Emily and I are about the only ones who don't look out," she added. "There's enough goin' on to look at, that's sartin."

There was indeed. Mr. E. Holliday Kendrick having taken possession of his new estate, immediately set about the improving and enlarging which Mr. Daniels had quoted him as contemplating. Carpenters, painters and gardeners were at work daily. The Kendrick motor cars and the Kendrick servants were much in evidence along East Wellmouth's main road. What had been done by the great man and his employees and what would be done in the near future kept the gossips busy. He was planning a new rose garden -- "the finest from Buzzard's Bay down"; he had torn out the "whole broadside" of the music-room and was "cal'latin" to make it twice as large as formerly; he was to build a large conservatory on the knoll by the stables. Hannah Parker declared she could not see the need of this. "There's a tower onto the main buildin' already," she said, "pretty nigh as high as a lighthouse. I should think a body could see fur enough from that tower, without riggin' up a conservatory. Well, Mrs. Kendrick needn't ask ME to go up in it. I went to the top of the conservatory on Scargo Hill one time and I was so dizzy in the head I thought sure I'd fall right over the railin'."