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