For
months, now, they have been measuring the depth of the water and
testing this place and that. For my part, I think the preparations are
only a device for making money. The engineer will enrich himself: the
embankment and the street will be in his bank, but not here. The money
they have spent already on his reports is appalling. But of course, if
they _do_ build an esplanade, our house will be worth three times what
it cost us. We will let it as a cafe or a restaurant, and it will
bring us rent all the year round. God grant it may be so!
"We resolved, however, to protect it, and we obtained permission to
build a Chinese wall in front of it. But _Bozhe moi_, what that wall
is costing us--already fifteen hundred roubles, and on the original
estimate we thought five hundred.
"Even as it is we don't know how we stand. The engineer may claim that
wall as belonging to the town. The town may have it knocked down, for
it is built just outside our boundary line. We go down to the sand,
and we have built upon the sand."
Obviously she hadn't built upon a rock.
"Now that they think of making a street in front of us, they will
call part of the seashore land, and it will be surveyed. Someone will
remark that we have encroached, and then down will go our wall and
with it our fifteen hundred roubles.
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