This house--well, it is such a sensible-looking
house, that is my chief objection to it. It has got an echo. If you
go to the end of the garden and shout at it very loudly, it answers
you back. This is the only bit of fun you can have with it. Even
then it answers you in such a tone you feel it thinks the whole thing
silly--is doing it merely to humour you. It is one of those houses
that always seems to be thinking of its rates and taxes."
"Any reason at all for your having bought it?" asked Dick.
"Yes, Dick," I answered. "We are all of us tired of this suburb. We
want to live in the country and be good. To live in the country with
any comfort it is necessary to have a house there. This being
admitted, it follows we must either build a house or buy one. I
would rather not build a house. Talboys built himself a house. You
know Talboys. When I first met him, before he started building, he
was a cheerful soul with a kindly word for everyone. The builder
assures him that in another twenty years, when the colour has had
time to tone down, his house will be a picture. At present it makes
him bilious, the mere sight of it. Year by year, they tell him, as
the dampness wears itself away, he will suffer less and less from
rheumatism, ague, and lumbago. He has a hedge round the garden; it
is eighteen inches high. To keep the boys out he has put up barbed-
wire fencing. But wire fencing affords no real privacy.
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