about
it any more."

"However did you dare, Jim?" breathed Norah, as the cleaning party
moved towards the dining-room. "Do you think a butler ever washed a
floor before?"

"Can't say," said Jim easily. "I'm regarding him more as a sergeant
than a butler, for the moment--not that I can remember seeing a
sergeant wash a floor, either. But he seemed anxious to help, so why
not let him? It won't hurt him; he's getting disgracefully fat. And
there's plenty to do."

"Heaps," said Wally cheerily. "Where's that floor-polish, Nor? These
boards want a rub. What are you going to do?"

"Polish brass," said Norah, beginning on a window-catch. "When I grow
up I think I'll be an architect, and then I'll make the sort of house
that women will care to live in."

"What sort's that?" asked Jim.

"I don't know what the outside will be like. But it won't have any
brass to keep clean, or any skirting-boards with pretty tops to catch
dust, or any corners in the rooms. Brownie and I used to talk about
it. All the cupboards will be built in, so's no dust can get under
them, and the windows will have some patent dodge to open inwards when
they want cleaning. And there'll be built-in washstands in every
room, with taps and plugs----"

"Brass taps?" queried Wally.

"Certainly not."

"What then?"

"Oh--something. Something that doesn't need to be kept pretty. And
then there will be heaps of cupboard-room and heaps of
shelf-room--only all the shelves will be narrow, so that nothing can
be put behind anything else."

"Whatever do you mean?" asked Jim.

"She means dead mice--you know they get behind bottles of jam," said
Wally kindly. "Go on, Nor, you talk like a book."

"Well, dead mice are as good as anything," said Norah lucidly. "There
won't be any room for their corpses on _my_ shelves. And I'll have
some arrangement for supplying hot water through the house that
doesn't depend on keeping a huge kitchen fire alight."

"That's a good notion," said Jim, sitting back on his heels, blacklead
brush in hand. "I think I'll go architecting with you, Nor. We'll go
in for all sorts of electric dodges; plugs in all the rooms to fix to
vacuum cleaners you can work with one hand--most of 'em want two men
and a boy; and electric washing-machines, and cookers, and fans and
all kinds of things. And everybody will be using them, so electricity
will have to be cheap."

"I really couldn't help listening to you," said a de