Of course the stove is wrong. The kitchen stove always is wrong.
You promise she shall have a new one. Six months later she will want
the old one back again: but it would be cruel to tell her this. The
promise of that new stove comforts her. The woman never loses hope
that one day it will come--the all-satisfying kitchen stove, the
stove of her girlish dreams.
The question of the stove settled, you imagine you have silenced all
opposition. At once she begins to talk about things that nobody but
a woman or a sanitary inspector can talk about without blushing.
It calls for tact, getting a woman into a new house. She is nervous,
suspicious.
"I am glad, my dear Dick," I answered; "that you have mentioned
cupboards. It is with cupboards that I am hoping to lure your
mother. The cupboards, from her point of view, will be the one
bright spot; there are fourteen of them. I am trusting to cupboards
to tide me over many things. I shall want you to come with me, Dick.
Whenever your mother begins a sentence with: 'But now to be
practical, dear,' I want you to murmur something about cupboards--not
irritatingly as if it had been prearranged: have a little gumption."
"Will there be room for a tennis court?" demanded Dick.
"An excellent tennis court already exists," I informed him. "I have
also purchased the adjoining paddock. We shall be able to keep our
own cow. Maybe we'll breed horses.
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