CHAPTER I
"It is not a large house," I said. "We don\'t want a large house. Two
spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered place you see marked there
on the plan, next to the bathroom, and which will just do for a bachelor,
will be all we shall require--at all events, for the present. Later on, if I
ever get rich, we can throw out a wing. The kitchen I shall have to break to
your mother gently. Whatever the original architect could have been
thinking of--"
"Never mind the kitchen," said Dick: "what about the billiardroom?"
The way children nowadays will interrupt a parent is nothing short of a
national disgrace. I also wish Dick would not sit on the table, swinging
his legs. It is not respectful. "Why, when I was a boy," as I said to him,
"I should as soon have thought of sitting on a table, interrupting my father-
-"
"What\'s this thing in the middle of the hall, that looks like a grating?"
demanded Robina.
"She means the stairs," explained Dick.
"Then why don\'t they look like stairs?" commented Robina.
"They do," replied Dick, "to people with sense."
"They don\'t," persisted Robina, "they look like a grating." Robina,
with the plan spread out across her knee, was sitting balanced on the arm
of an easy-chair. Really, I hardly see the use of buying chairs for these
people. Nobody seems to know what they are for--except it be one or
another of the dogs. Perches are all they want.
"If we threw the drawing-room into the hall and could do away with
the stairs," thought Robina, "we should be able to give a dance now and
then."