"A NEW HOUSE, FROM FATHER."

The enclosed slip was a bank-check, duly stamped and endorsed. Did any
old wizard's magic-box ever hold greater promise in smaller compass!
Certainly not more than the bride saw in imagination as she read the
figures upon the crisp bit of tissue. Walls, roof and stately chimneys
arose in pleasant pictures before her mental vision. There were broad
windows taking in floods of sunshine; fireplaces that glowed with
living flames and never smoked; lazy lounging places and cosy corners
for busy work or quiet study; sleepy bed-rooms; a kitchen that made
housework the finest art and the surest science, and oh, such closets,
such stairways, such comforts! such defiance of the elements, such
security against cold and heat, against fire, flood and tempest! such
economy! such immunity from all the ills that domestic life is heir to,
from intractable servants to sewer-gas!

If some ardent esthete had arrested her flight of fancy by asking
whether she found room for soul-satisfying beauty, she would have
dropped from her air-castle, landing squarely upon her feet, and
replied that if her house was comfortable and told no lies it would be
beautiful enough for her--which was saying a great deal, however
interpreted, for she loved beauty, as all well-balanced mortals ought,
and she would have been conspicuously out of place in a house that was
not beautiful.

Perhaps I ought to explain that the house that Jack built, intending to
establish Jill as its mistress when it should be completed, had proved
most unsatisfactory to that extremely practical young woman. In
consequence, she had obstinately refused to name the happy day till the