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."
"Perhaps," I suggested, "you would like to clear out the house
altogether, leaving nothing but the four bare walls. That would give
us still more room, that would. For just living in, we could fix up
a shed in the garden; or--"
"I'm talking seriously," said Robina: "what's the good of a drawing-
room? One only wants it to show the sort of people into that one
wishes hadn't come. They'd sit about, looking miserable, just as
well anywhere else. If we could only get rid of the stairs--"
"Oh, of course! we could get rid of the stairs," I agreed.
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