"The wise ones will approve; the foolish ones will demonstrate their
folly by criticising what they don't understand."

"Very well, that point is settled. Unless the next is sharp and short
you must decide it without my help. It is high time I was at the
office."

"We will defer them all. It is time for me to be at my household
duties. You know Cousin Bessie comes this afternoon, and I've noticed
that extremely intellectual people are sometimes extremely fond of a
good dinner."

"If Bessie is coming I must anoint my beard with oil of sunflowers and
trot out my old gold slippers. Shall I send up some pale lilies for
dessert? And that reminds me--Jim came home last night and I asked the
old fellow to come up to dinner. How do you suppose Bess found it out?"

"Don't be spiteful, Jack. She didn't find it out at all. I invited her
a week ago. Now go to the office, please, while I put the house in
order."

During this important process Jill entertained herself by philosophical
reflection upon the style of living that requires a house to be
constantly "put in order." She recalled certain of Uncle Harry's
observations to the effect that in a truly civilized state housekeeping
would be so conducted and houses would be so contrived that instead of
causing care and labor proverbially endless, housekeepers would no more
be burdened by their domestic duties than are the fowls of the air.
Jill had too much of the rare good sense, incorrectly called "common,"
to attempt to reduce Uncle Harry's theories to practice all at once.
She knew that though we may not reach the summit of our ambition, it is
well to advance toward it even by a single step, or failing in that, to
help prepare a way for some one else. She understood the wisdom of
striving to increase the fraction of life by dividing the denominator,
and at the same time cherished the broader hope that her life and her
home might be filled with whatever is of most enduring worth.

Moralizing thus, but always with an architectural or house-building
background, she continued her work, noticing the sharp grooves and
projecting mouldings that caught the dust, the high, ugly thresholds,
the doors that swung the wrong way, compelling half a dozen extra steps
in passing through them; shelves that were too high or too narrow;
drawers that refused to "draw" or dropped helplessly on the floor as
soon as they were drawn out far enough to display the spoons and
spices they contained;