When the
Talboys are taking coffee on the lawn, there is generally a crowd
from the village watching them. There are trees in the garden; you
know they are trees--there is a label tied to each one telling you
what sort of tree it is. For the moment there is a similarity about
them. Thirty years hence, Talboys estimates, they will afford him
shade and comfort; but by that time he hopes to be dead. I want a
house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the
rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house."
"But why this particular house?" urged Robin, "if, as you say, it is
not the house you wanted."
"Because, my dear girl," I answered, "it is less unlike the house I
wanted than other houses I have seen. When we are young we make up
our minds to try and get what we want; when we have arrived at years
of discretion we decide to try and want what we can get. It saves
time. During the last two years I have seen about sixty houses, and
out of the lot there was only one that was really the house I wanted.
Hitherto I have kept the story to myself. Even now, thinking about
it irritates me. It was not an agent who told me of it. I met a man
by chance in a railway carriage. He had a black eye. If ever I meet
him again I'll give him another. He accounted for it by explaining
that he had had trouble with a golf ball, and at the time I believed
him. I mentioned to him in conversation I was looking for a house.
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