to construct the North American home in so many contradictory methods,
or else fail forever of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
that Corona felt herself to be laboring under a chronic aberration of
mind.... Then the plans. Well, the plans, it must be confessed, Corona
_did_ find it difficult to understand. She always had found it difficult
to understand such things; but then she had hoped several weeks of close
architectural study would shed light upon the density of the subject.
She grew quite morbid about it. She counted the steps when she went
up-stairs to bed at night. She estimated the bedroom post when she
walked in the cold, gray dawn....

But the most perplexing thing about the plans was how one story ever got
upon another. Corona's imagination never fully grappled with this fact,
although her intellect accepted it. She took her books down-stairs one
night, and Susy came and looked them over.

"Why, these houses are all one-story," said Susy. "Besides, they're
nothing but lines, anyway. I shouldn't draw a house so."

Corona laughed with some embarrassment and no effort at enlightenment.
She was not used to finding herself and Susy so nearly on the same
intellectual level as in this instance. She merely asked: "How should
you draw it?"

"Why, so," said Susy, after some severe thought. So she took her little
blunt lead pencil, that the baby had chewed, and drew her plan as
follows:

[Illustration: SUSY'S PLAN]