“What, the roof?”

“No, the whole thing; how many rooms will it have?”

“That will depend on the size of the family.  Not less than ten nor more than forty.  Ten rooms will answer for two people, and more than forty complicates the housekeeping.”

“Do you count closets?”

“Oh, no.  Closets and dressing rooms, storerooms, bath rooms, cupboards and things of that sort, are mere adjuncts.  They are to the real rooms what the pockets are to a suit of clothes.”

“Excellent.  I’m glad we haven’t got to count the closet or the expense.  Probably ten rooms are not too many for two young people, but a pair of childless octogenarians ought to get along with eight or nine; the other way you are all right, only I would say four hundred.  While we are about it, let’s have a comfortable, good sized, ‘roomy’ house.  But how do you propose to put even forty rooms with their various pockets under one roof and give them all plenty of sunlight and fresh air?  Will you pile them up one above another or set them in a row on the ground?  In either case it would need a trolly car and a telephone to connect the two ends of the line.”

“It mustn’t be more than two stories high, and I’m not sure but one would be better.”

“That means twenty rooms on each floor.  The rooms will average twenty feet long, and that will make the entire length of our castle four or five hundred feet.  Won’t it look like an institution or a row of tenements if it is strung out in a line?”

“It will not be.”

“Cut up into wings and things?”

“No, it will be in the form of a hollow square.  There may be a wing or two on one side or another, and wherever a projecting bay or oriel will add to the comfort or charm of the interior we shall have one, but its general form will be a great square with an open court in the center.”

“Oh, I see.  An imitation Pompeian, or Florentine palace.”

“No, nothing of the kind.  Not an imitation of anything.  It will be a simple, straightforward, common-sense, American home, with room for a good-sized family, several rooms for extra occasions, and some that will not be finished at all but held in reserve for future contingencies.  It sometimes costs no more to enclose a certain space in building than to leave it outside, and there is the same satisfaction in knowing we have space to spare inside the house that there is in owning the land that joins us even when we don’t expect to sell or use it.”

“What shall we do with the big hole in the center?  It will be too small for golf or tennis, and too big for a conservatory.  We might keep hens.”