The quartette below listened with conflicting emotions.  Jill was indignant, Bessie horrified—­apparently, Jim greatly amused, and Jack sublimely indifferent.  “If there’s anything I despise,” said Jill, “it is a house that makes a human being seem like an elephant, and where I can’t say my prayers or move a chair in my own room without rousing the entire household.”

“There’s one good thing about it,” said Jim pleasantly.  “You can’t help knowing what is going on in your own house.”

“Spoken like a man and a brother, James.  You always go to the root of a matter.  I like to keep posted.  No skeletons and gunpowder plots for me.  I had this house made so on purpose.”  Whereat they all laughed and again took up the floor question, while the sound of hurrying feet and the rattling of domestic implements went on overhead, and the chandelier trembled with the jarring floors.

“I suppose forty dollars’ worth of timber originally added to these floors would have made them so firm that we might drive a caravan across them without shaking the building.  We will, at least, have solid floors in the new house; but the architect informs us that ’effectual deafening of the floors and partitions necessarily adds considerably to their cost, since the walls and ceilings must be virtually double or filled with some light porous material.  The construction I have described for making the house fireproof, or nearly so, would also make it comparatively sound-proof.  It would prevent the passage of any reasonable in-door noises, though it might not withstand the stamping of heavy steel-shod feet.  Indeed, the question of bare, hard-wood floors is, in one of its aspects, rather a question of boots.  It is most unreasonable to say the floors are noisy and slippery when the fault lies rather in the hard, stiff, awkward receptacles in which our feet are imprisoned.  If we are ever clad from head to foot in the robes of a perfect civilization, we shall doubtless find smooth bare floors for general use more satisfactory than any kind of rugs, mats or carpets.’

“And now,” said Jill, “we will leave the rest of this interminable letter for a more convenient season and see what our indefatigable aunt has sent as the latest and best thing in domestic architecture.  If you will take the plans and follow the description, I will read the letter straight through, though it will doubtless contain more or less advice not strictly pertinent to house-building.  Here it is: 

“MY DEAR JILL:  On further reflection I have concluded that the little cottage plans which I sent last will not answer.  I doubt whether you and Jack have sufficient independence and originality to make a success of living; even temporarily, in a small, unpretending cottage.  It requires unusual strength of character’—­

“Listen, Jack.