“How will it look standing out there all alone by itself?”

“Haven’t I told you, my dear, that whatever is well looks well?”

“Yes, but it takes a mighty faith to believe it, and I’m not even a mustard-seed.  What is the little room in the southwest corner for?”

“That is the library, and for an ordinary family it is large enough.  It is twelve feet by fourteen.  It will hold three or four thousand books, a table, a writing-desk, a lounge and three or four easy chairs.  More room would spoil the privacy which belongs to a library and make it a sort of common sitting-room.  Moreover, by drawing aside the portieres and opening the doors we can make it a part of the large room when we wish to; and, on the other hand, when they are closed and the bay window curtains drawn, instead of one large room we shall have three separate apartments for three solitary misanthropes, for three tete-a-tetes, or for three incompatible groups, not counting the hall—­no, nor the stair-landing, which will be a capital place for a quiet—­”

“Flirtation.”

At this point they were interrupted by a telegram from Aunt Melville, begging them not to begin on George’s plan, as she had found something much more satisfactory.

CHAPTER III.

A FIRST VISIT AND SAGE ADVICE.

They didn’t begin to build, from Cousin George’s nor from any other plan, for many weeks.  Until the new house should be completed, Jill had agreed to commence housekeeping in the house that Jack built, without making any alterations in it, only reserving the privilege of finding all the fault she pleased to Jack privately, in order, as she said, to 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?”