Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/209

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198
THE ANCIENT GRUDGE

ing his work. When Floyd called his attention to the awkwardness of having the bathrooms so remote from the dressing-rooms, Stewart answered, "You can't place them any other way and keep the colonnade." "Then I guess we'd better dispense with the colonnade," said Floyd. Stewart demurred frostily. The colonnade was the detail which gave character to the building. His theory was that what women living in poor ugly houses would most appreciate and find restful in the club was its æsthetic quality, and he had made all else secondary to that. None of the points that Floyd criticised could be altered without radical impairment of the beauty and harmony of the design. Floyd was firm; he said that his grandmother's purpose had been practical rather than æsthetic, and he wished to carry it out as she herself would have done. He did not believe that the æsthetic was so irreconcilable with the practical. If Stewart said that it was in this set of plans, he would have to take his word for it; but of course fresh drawings could be made.

Stewart grumbled a little about the inability of laymen to appreciate the first principles of architecture, and said that if they could only realize how capricious their desires and criticisms usually were, they would give the architect a freer hand. He promised, however, to make the changes without delay. He had drawn the plans himself, wishing to do something especially good for Floyd; the next day he gave them to his chief draughtsman, telling him what objections had been raised, and asking him to make the necessary changes. The draughtsman was a clever fellow in his way; and when Floyd received the revised plans, he was gratified to note how successfully the old difficulties had been eliminated and with what little loss of beauty. He congratulated Stewart on this, and Stewart answered with resignation, "Yes, it looks so to you—but the building is not really the same."

Stewart's pride had been touched by the fact that Floyd, quite unknowingly, had preferred the draughtsman's re-