“I realty don’t know much about such things.  I never did like to know what I was going to have for dinner long beforehand—­it makes me so awfully hungry.”

“Precisely so, Jim; it gives you am appetite.  I had the house planned in this way for that very purpose.”

“Now that you have introduced the subject,” said Jill, “I will tell you how I should have planned it.  There should have been a ‘cut-off’ somewhere—­a little lobby between the kitchen and the rest of the house, with a ventilating flue so large that neither smoke nor steam nor perfumed air could pass it without being caught up and carried to the sky.  Of course these odors ought not to get away from the ventilator above the range, but the best contrivances are not proof against the carelessness of the cook when she is in a hurry—­as she always is just before dinner.”

When they returned to the sitting-room Bessie brought down a set of plans her father had sent for Jack and Jill to examine, thinking they would suit their lot and taste.  They did suit the lot fairly, but Jill’s mind was too fully made up to accept any change from her own plan.  The exterior she approved cordially, but to Bessie’s despair would not promise to imitate it, preferring to leave the outside to her architect without reserve.

While they were spoiling their eyes in the twilight Jack pressed the electric “button” that lighted the gas instantaneously all over the house, causing Bessie to cry out in protest against such a sudden transition.  “It is so violent, so unlike the slow, sweet processes of nature.  I never shall learn to like gas, and the electric light is absolutely horrid.  Don’t you love tapers, Mr. James?”

“Tapirs?  I don’t think I’m a judge; I never had one.  I should rather have a tame zebra.”

“Oh, I mean tapers for light!”

“Excuse me—­certainly:  yes, that is, I think I do.  We don’t use them very often.  Do you mean tallow or wax?”

“Wax, of course!  They have such elegant decorations on them.  I had a most exquisite sconce Christmas, with two of the loveliest tapers completely covered with Moorish arabesques in crimson and old gold.”

“What becomes of the decorations when the tapers burn up?”

“Well, we don’t burn them much.  Indeed, I don’t think we ought to use artificial light at all.  The mysterious light of the moon and stars is so much more enchanting.  Don’t you love to muse and dream in the fading twilight?”

“No, not very well.  The trouble is if I get to sleep before I go to bed I don’t sleep as well afterward.”

“Oh, I don’t mean actual dreams, but vague, dreamy musings, esthetic aspirations and longings.  Do you never long for abstract beauty?”

“Well, no, not long.  If I can’t get what I want pretty quick I generally go for something else.”

This irrelevant conversation was vastly entertaining to Jack, who, knowing how unlike were the dispositions of his brother and his wife’s cousin, had contrived their meeting with special reference to his own amusement.  When the clock told the hour for retiring he brought Bessie a tin candlestick, in which a tallow candle smoked and spluttered in a feeble way, but filled the soul of the young lady with admiration, it was so “full of feeling.”