they keep up rather a ‘tony’ style of living in the south end; are not above condescending to men of low estate to the extent of receiving common people in the big hall, but holding themselves about two steps above the average human; and, finally, if and provided the butler’s pantry is made as large again for a smoking-room, and the kitchen pantry made large enough to hold the butler.  With these few remarks, I think we may lay this set of plans on the table.”

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI.

THE WISDOM OF JILL IN THE KITCHEN.

“Perhaps Jack will remember,” said Jill, as she prepared to explain her plans, “that we examined not long ago a large number of somewhat pretentious houses, but did not find one that was satisfactory, the defects being usually in what I should call the working department of the house.  The large front rooms were often exceedingly charming, elegantly furnished and well arranged.”

“For which reason,” said Jack, “the family seemed to be religiously kept out of them unless they had on their company manners and their Sunday clothes, or wished to make themselves particularly miserable by having a wedding, a sewing society or an evening party.”

“The rear boundary of the dining-room seemed like Mason and Dixon’s line in the old times; once beyond it, we entered a region ’without law or ornament or order,’ a realm of architectural incompetence, confusion and evil work—­if it is fair to call the arrangements of the domestic part of a house an architectural matter.”

“Certainly it is,” Jack affirmed, “and it’s my opinion that no architect ought to receive his diploma until he has served one year in a first-class family as cook, butler and maid-of-all-work.”

[Illustration:  THE OUTSIDE OF TED’S HOUSE.]

“One would almost be inclined to think that such an experience, with another year at bridge building, had been with certain ’practical architects and builders’ the entire course of study.”

“It was plain enough,” Jill continued, “that these houses were planned by men, who were not only ignorant of the details of housework but who held them in low esteem, as of no special importance.  They evidently exhausted their room and their resources on what they are pleased to call the ‘main’ part of the house, leaving the kitchen and all its accessories to be fashioned out of the chips and fragments that remained.  It would be a similar thing if a man should build a factory, fill it with machinery, furnish and equip the offices, warerooms and shipping docks, but leave no room for the engine that is to drive the whole or for the fuel that feeds the engine.  When ‘we women’ practice domestic architecture, as we surely ought and shall,—­”

“When it’s fashionable.”

“—­we shall change all that.  If there can be but two good rooms in a house it is better to have a kitchen and sitting-room than a dining-room and parlor.  I propose to begin at the other end of the problem in planning our house.  It may not suit anybody else, but if it suits Jack and I it will be a model home.”