any pet theories?"

"What's that? Pet theories about what?"

"Housekeeping."

"I don't quite understand. I've never kept house, you know."

"I mean did your mother keep her house and buy her furniture and manage
her servants to suit you, or exactly as you would do if you had been in
her place?"

"Not in the least," said the Angel, laying down his book, all interest
at once.

"Ah! I knew it! Then you _have_ theories! That's what I wanted to
bring out. Now I have theories, too. One is the rag-bag theory."

"The--?"

"The theory that every housewife must have a rag-bag. My mother had
one because her mother did and _her_ mother because _hers_ did, and so
on back to the English one who probably brought _her_ rag-bag across
with her. Ours was made of bed-ticking, and had a draw-string in it
and hung in the bathroom closet. Now if you ever tried to lift a heavy
bag down from a hook and knew the bother of emptying it of neat little
rolls of every sort of cloth from big rolls of cotton-batting to little
bundles of silk patches and having to look through every one of them to
find a scrap of white taffeta to line a stock, then you know what a
trial of temper the family rag-bag is."

"And you--" said the Angel, who is definite in his conclusions.

"_I_ mean to have a large drawer in a good light absolutely
_sacrificed_, as some people would call it, to the scraps. When you
want a rag or a bone or a hank of hair in our house, all you will have
to do is to pull out an easy sliding drawer without opening a door that
sticks, or crawling into a dark corner, or having to light a candle, or
doing anything to ruffle your temper or your hair. A flood of
brilliant sunlight or moonlight will pour into my rag-drawer, and a few
pawings of your unoccupied hand will bring everything to the top.
Won't that be joyful?"

Aubrey, who loves to fuss about repairs and is for ever wanting
material, was so enchanted with the picture I drew that he longed to
have a cut finger to bind up on the spot.

"Have you any more theories?" he asked, laying Draper on his knee
without even marking his place.

"A few. Some are about buying furniture."

"We want everything good," said Aubrey, firmly.

"More than that. We want _some_ things beautiful. And some things
_very_ expensive."

I thought I saw the bank-book give a nervous flop just here. But
perhaps it was only Aubrey's expression of countenance which changed.

"For insta