CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN SHANNONDALE.
Nine years of change in Shannondale, and the green hill-side, which stretched from the common down to the river where, when our story opened, sheep and cows were feeding in the pasture land, is thickly covered with houses of every kind of architecture, from the Mansard roof to the Queen Anne style, just coming into fashion, while the meadow lands are dotted over with the small houses of the men who work in the large furnace, or manufactory, which Peterkin had bought and enlarged, as a monument, he said, and where he sometimes employed as many as four hundred men, and had set up a whistle which could be heard for miles and miles, and nearly blew off the chimney-tops when it sounded in the morning at six o'clock, it was so loud and shrill.

A screecher, Peterkin called it, and he always listened with a smile of pride and satisfaction on his face when he heard the first indications of its blowing, and knew that four hundred men were quickening their stops on account of it, lest they should be a few minutes late and have their wages docked.
Peterkin counted two millions now, and boasted the finest, or at least, the most expensive house in the county, not even excepting Tracy Park, which still held its own for solidity and old-fashioned dignity, and was the show place to the strangers visiting in Shannondale.
When Peterkin made $20,000 in one day from some speculation in stocks, he said to Mr.St.Claire, who was now a judge, and with whom he pretended to be on terms of great familiarity: 'I say, judge, I'm goin' to build a buster, and whip the crowd.

I've lived about long enough in that little nine-by-ten hole, and I'll be dumbed if I don't show 'em what I can do.

I'll have towers, and bay-windows, and piazzers, with checkered work all 'round 'em, and a preservatory, and all kinds of new fangled doin's.

May Jane and Ann 'Liza want that Queen Anny style, but I tell 'em no such squatty things for me.