“Without money and without price?”

“No, not quite that, there are too many incorporated monopolies in the way.  But it is coming nearer and nearer, and with the unlimited power of wind and waves and waterfalls, all these things will soon be as cheap as anything really worth having ought to be.”

“Say, Jill, do you suppose we shall live to see all our necessities supplied, gratis, and have nothing to work for except the luxuries?”

“We have lived long enough to find that for most people in our day and generation, even for those who think they have to work very hard ’just to get a living,’ their most serious toil is to provide, what might be called, not the ‘bare’ necessities of life, but the well-dressed necessities.  But it is time for those children to be in bed.”

CHAPTER XX.

A DOUBLE CONCLUSION.

“Now Jill,” this was half an hour later, the children were asleep and the gas was lighted, “let us by way of amusement draw plans of a castle in Spain.  Let us forget all the houses that ever were built and fancy ourselves, not Adam and Eve, with the responsibility of setting the housekeeping pace for the rest of the human family nor Robinson Crusoe, whose domestic arrangements were somewhat handicapped, but a wise pair of semi-Bourbons, at the end of the 19th century, who forget nothing old but are willing to learn and adopt anything new, provided it is good.”

“All right; go ahead.”

“In the first place our castle will not be destructible by fire or water.  All the walls will be of masonry and the floor beams will be of steel.  There will be nothing to invite moth or rust.”

“Nor burglars; not so much as a silver spoon or a candlestick.”

“I have always been sorry that the roof of this house was not fireproof, but I suppose it would have cost too much, though the architect said it might have been made like the floors if we would consent to have it flat.”

“Moral:  if you want a roof of the mountainous variety you must either pay for it or run the risk of being burned out on top.  But what do castles in Spain care for the cost?  We can have fireproof roofs in miniature copy of Alpine peaks or we can use them for billiard tables and croquet grounds.”

“Really,” Jill continued, “there is no good reason for steep roofs.  Snow is more troublesome on the ground around the house than on top of it, if it will stay there, and a very slight slope will carry off the rain.  I fancy steep roofs must have been invented when builders used such clumsy materials for covering that they were obliged to lay them on a steep pitch in order to keep out the water.  Shingles of course last longer the steeper the roof.”

“If that’s the case they ought to last forever on the second story walls of our house, where they are straight up and down.  When you come to think of it, high roofs must be built now-a-days mainly for show, incidentally they cover the house.  First beautiful, then useful.  How large will it be?”