"It is clumsy, one must own," said Mrs. Holabird, "besides being
suggestive."

"So is a piano," said the determined Barbara.

"I can _imagine_ a cooking-stove," said Rosamond, slowly.

"Well, do! That's just where your gift will come in!"

"A pretty copper tea-kettle, and a shiny tin boiler, made to
order,--like an urn, or something,--with a copper faucet, and nothing
else ever about, except it were that minute wanted; and all the tins
and irons begun with new again, and kept clean; and little cocoanut
dippers with German silver rims; and things generally contrived as
they are for other kinds of rooms that ladies use; it _might_ be like
that little picnicking dower-house we read about in a novel, or like
Marie Antoinette's Trianon."

"That's what it _would_ come to, if it was part of our living, just as
we come to have gold thimbles and lovely work-boxes. We should give
each other Christmas and birthday presents of things; we should have
as much pleasure and pride in it as in the china-closet. Why, the
whole trouble is that the kitchen is the only place taste _hasn't_ got
into. Let's have an art-kitchen!"

"We might spend a little money in fitting up a few things freshly, if
we are to save the waste and expense of a servant," said Mrs.
Holabird.