diffused being decidedly greater.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper," said she, after they had sat a while in
silence enjoying the ameliorating influence of the blaze, "but I _do_
hate a humbug. We will let this stove stand here all summer to remind
you that neither your house nor your wife is perfect, and to keep me
warm when the east wind blows."

[Illustration: WARMTH UNDER THE WINDOW.]

Jack's response to this magnanimous remark must be omitted, as it had
no direct bearing upon house-building.

"When I went into the kitchen this morning to get warm," Jill observed
later in the evening, "I found Bridget ironing; the stove was red-hot,
the bath boiler was bubbling and shaking with the imprisoned steam, and
the outside door was wide open. It struck me that there was heat enough
going out of doors, not to mention the superheated air of the kitchen
itself, to have made the whole house comfortable such days as this, if
it could only be saved. Don't you think it would be possible to attach
a pipe to some part of the cooking-range that would carry steam or hot
water to the front of the house. We shouldn't want it when the furnace
was running, nor in very warm weather, and at such times it could be
turned off."

Jack thought it could be done, and expressed a willingness to be a
roasted martyr occasionally if he could by that means make some use of
the perennial fire in the kitchen, a fire that seemed to be the hottest
when there was no demand for it.