heir domestic treasury,--left as the sole
residuum of a painstaking old aunt, who took it into her head to make a
will in Bob's favor, leaving, among other good things, a nice little bit
of land in a rural district half an hour's railroad-ride from Boston.

So now ground-plans thicken, and my wife is being consulted morning,
noon, and night, and I never come into the room without finding their
heads close together over a paper, and hearing Bob expatiate on his
favorite idea of a library. He appears to have got so far as this, that
the ceiling is to be of carved oak, with ribs running to a boss
overhead, and finished mediaevally with ultramarine blue and
gilding,--and then away he goes sketching Gothic patterns of
book-shelves which require only experienced carvers, and the wherewithal
to pay them, to be the divinest things in the world.

Marianne is exercised about china-closets and pantries, and about a
bed-room on the ground-door,--for, like all other women of our days, she
expects not to have strength enough to run up-stairs oftener than once
or twice a week; and my wife, who is a native genius in this line, and
has planned in her time dozens of houses for acquaintances, wherein they
are at this moment living happily, goes over every day with her pencil
and ruler the work of rearranging the plans, according as the ideas of
the young couple veer and vary.

One day Bob is importuned to give two feet off from his library for a
closet in the bed-room,--but resists like a Trojan. The next morning,
being mollified by private domestic supplications, Bob yields, and my
wife rubs out the lines of yesterday, two feet come off the library, and
a closet is constructed. But now the parlor proves too narrow,--the
parlor-wall must be moved two feet into the hall. Bob declares this will
spoil the symmetry of the latter, and if there is anything he wants, it
is a wide, generous, ample hall to step into when you open the
front-door.

"Well, then," says Marianne, "let's put two feet more into the width of
the house."

"Can't, on account of the expense, you see," says Bob. "You see, every
additional foot of outside wall necessitates so many more bricks, so
much more flooring, so much more roofing, etc."

And my wife, with thoughtful brow, looks over the plans, and considers
how two feet more are to be got into the parlor without moving any of
the walls.

"I say," says Bob, bending over her shoulder, "here, take your two feet
in