"But up here, you know, we just wear anything." She didn't say that this old thing was only two weeks old and had cost eighty dollars, or the equivalent of one person's pew rent at St.Asaph's for six months.
And after that they had only time, so it seemed to Mr.Spillikins, for two or three remarks, and he had scarcely had leisure to reflect what a charming girl Philippa had grown to be since she went to Bermuda--the effect, no doubt, of the climate of those fortunate islands--when quite suddenly they rounded a curve into an avenue of nodding trees, and there were the great lawn and wide piazzas and the conservatories of Castel Casteggio right in front of them.
"Here we are," said Philippa, "and there's Mr.Newberry out on the lawn." * * * * * "Now, here," Mr.Newberry was saying a little later, waving his hand, "is where you get what I think the finest view of the place." He was standing at the corner of the lawn where it sloped, dotted with great trees, to the banks of the little lake, and was showing Mr.
Spillikins the beauties of Castel Casteggio.
Mr.Newberry wore on his short circular person the summer costume of a man taking his ease and careless of dress: plain white flannel trousers, not worth more than six dollars a leg, an ordinary white silk shirt with a rolled collar, that couldn't have cost more than fifteen dollars, and on his head an ordinary Panama hat, say forty dollars.
"By Jove!" said Mr.Spillikins, as he looked about him at the house and the beautiful lawn with its great trees, "it's a lovely place." "Isn't it ?" said Mr.Newberry.

"But you ought to have seen it when I took hold of it.

To make the motor road alone I had to dynamite out about a hundred yards of rock, and then I fetched up cement, tons and tons of it, and boulders to buttress the embankment." "Did you really!" said Mr.Spillikins, looking at Mr.Newberry with great respect.
"Yes, and even that was nothing to the house itself.

Do you know, I had to go at least forty feet for the foundations.

First I went through about twenty feet of loose clay, after that I struck sand, and I'd no sooner got through that than, by George! I landed in eight feet of water.