“Uncle Harry’s notion of reform,” said Jack, after the long letter had been read, “seems to be to blow the universe to pieces and then put it together again on a new and improved plan.  It strikes me we had better fight it out on this line and try to straighten the evils we know something about rather than invent new ones.  If we had begun on that track and tried to utilize the waste materials on strictly economical principles, perhaps by this time our methods and machinery would have been so far perfected that the real or imaginary evils of modern plumbing would not have existed.  It seems a pity to throw away all we have accomplished and begin again.”

“That is a part of the price paid for progress,” said Jill.  “Stage coaches are useless when steam appears, and locomotives must go to the junk shop when electricity is ready to be harnessed.  But I’m afraid we cannot afford to be pioneers, and I’m sure the neighbors are not ready to co-operate.  We must still ‘go by water,’ and the important question is where to send the lower end of the main drain.  There is no sewer in the street, and a cesspool is an atrocity worthy of the darkest ages.  The only safe thing appears to be the sub-surface irrigation plan, for which, fortunately, there is plenty of room on our lot.  This comes very near to Uncle Harry’s notion of ‘earth to earth’ in the quickest time possible.  If we do it and accept the architect’s suggestion in the plan of the house we shall be reasonably safe from that most mysterious of all modern foes—­sewer-gas.”

“I’ve forgotten the architect’s suggestions; in fact, I don’t believe my head is quite equal to housebuilding with all the latest notions.  When my house was built I just told the carpenter to get up something stylish and good, about like Judge Gainsboro’s.  He showed me the plans, I signed the contract, and that was the whole of it.  I supposed a house was a house.  Now, before the new house is begun, I’m like Dick Whittington in the days of his poverty—­I’ve no peace by day or night.”

“Poor fellow!”

“I shudder to think what it will he when the house is fairly under way.  I can see five hundred different things at once, but when each one has five hundred sides and we get up into the hundred thousands, I begin to feel dizzy.  Uncle Harry has settled the plumbing question to his own satisfaction, so far as first principles are concerned; but who will tell us what kind of pipes and trimmings and bowls and basins and traps and plugs and stops and pedals and pulls and cranks and pistons and plungers and hooks and staples and couplings and brakes and chains and pans and basins and tanks and floats and buoys and strainers and safes and bibbs and tuckers we are to adopt?  If I should consume midnight oil during a full four years’ course at a college for plumbers I should still find myself just upon the threshold of the temple of knowledge.”

CHAPTER XIV.