'Why, if ever I stop to take a chair, or rest my bones a bit, she's after me in a jiffy, and asks if I don't think I can get so much done in an hour if I work as tight as I can clip it.

I was never so druv in my life.' And yet both the man and Harold liked to see the little lady there, walking through the shavings, and holding high her dainty skirts as she clambered over piles of boards and shingles, or perching herself on the work bench, superintended them both, and twice by her intervention saved a door from swinging the wrong way, and from being a little askew.
Mrs.Tracy was greatly opposed to Maude's going so often to the cottage, wondering what pleasure she could find in seeing an old house repaired, and predicting that she would make herself sick.

But Maude was headstrong and would have her way, especially as her father did not object, but himself took her frequently to the cottage.

Frank was almost as much interested in the work as she was, and once offered his services, as did Dick St.Claire and Billy Peterkin.
'That's splendid.

We'll have a bee, and get a lot done,' Maude said; and she pressed into the _bee_ her father and Dick, and Billy, and Fred Raymond, and Tom, the latter of whom did nothing but find fault, saying that the ceiling ought to have been of different woods, the floor inlaid, and the tops of the windows cathedral glass.
'And I suppose you will find the money for all that elegance,' Maude said, as she held one end of a board for Harold to nail.