any comfort it is necessary to have a house there. This being
admitted, it follows we must either build a house or buy one. I
would rather not build a house. Talboys built himself a house. You
know Talboys. When I first met him, before he started building, he
was a cheerful soul with a kindly word for everyone. The builder
assures him that in another twenty years, when the colour has had
time to tone down, his house will be a picture. At present it makes
him bilious, the mere sight of it. Year by year, they tell him, as
the dampness wears itself away, he will suffer less and less from
rheumatism, ague, and lumbago. He has a hedge round the garden; it
is eighteen inches high. To keep the boys out he has put up barbed-
wire fencing. But wire fencing affords no real privacy. When the
Talboys are taking coffee on the lawn, there is generally a crowd
from the village watching them. There are trees in the garden; you
know they are trees--there is a label tied to each one telling you
what sort of tree it is. For the moment there is a similarity about
them. Thirty years hence, Talboys estimates, they will afford him
shade and comfort; but by that time he hopes to be dead. I want a
house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the
rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house."

"But why this particular house?" urged Robin, "if, as you say, it is
not the house you wanted."

"Because, my dear girl," I answered, "it is less unlike the house I
wanted than other houses I have seen. When we are young we make up
our minds to try and get what we want; when we have arrived at years
of discretion we decide to try and want what we can get. It saves
time. During the last two years I have seen about sixty houses, and
out of the lot there was only one that was really the house I wanted.