CHAPTER III.

A FIRST VISIT AND SAGE ADVICE.

They didn't begin to build, from Cousin George's nor from any other
plan, for many weeks. Until the new house should be completed, Jill had
agreed to commence housekeeping in the house that Jack built, without
making any alterations in it, only reserving the privilege of finding
all the fault she pleased to Jack privately, in order, as she said, to
convince him that it would be impossible for them to be permanently
happy in such a house.

"I supposed," said Jack, with a groan, "that my company would make you
blissfully happy in a cave or a dug-out."

"So it would, if we were bears--both of us. As we are sufficiently
civilized, taken together, to prefer artificial dwellings, it will be
much better for us to find out what we really need in a home by actual
experiment for a year or two. You know everybody who builds one house
for himself always wishes he could build another to correct the
mistakes of the first."

"Yes, and when he has done it probably finds worse blunders in the
second. Still, I'm open to conviction, and after our late architectural
tour perhaps my house won't seem in comparison so totally depraved."

[Illustration: AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION.]

When they visited it, preparatory to setting up their household
gods--Jack's bachelor arrangements being quite inadequate to the new
order of things--Jack, with a flourish, threw the highly ornamental
front door wide open. Jill walked solemnly in, and, looking neither to
the right nor the left, went straight up stairs.

"Hello!" Jack called after her, "what are you going up stairs for?"

"I supposed you expected everybody to go to the second floor," said
Jill, looking over the bannister, "or you wouldn't have set the stairs
directly across the front entrance."

"I do, of course," Jack responded, following three steps at a time.
"And now will you please signify your royal pleasure as to apartments?"

"Oh, yes! The first requisite is a room with at least one south
window."

"Here it is. A southerly window and a cloudy sky--two windows, in fact.
And look here: see what a glorious closet. It goes clear up to the
ceiling."

"It isn't a closet at all; only a little cupboard. It wouldn't hold
one-half of your clothes nor a tenth part of mine. And there's no
fireplace in the room--not even a hole for a stovepipe."

"Furnace, my dear. We shall be warmed from the regions below. There's
the register."