em lying around and just running over with these antique treasures.
Jim, can't I hire you to go out among the unesthetic heathens and buy
up a few loads of heirlooms and other relics of former greatness? We
shall want some old associations in the new house, and if we haven't
any of our own we must buy some."

"I don't think I know much about such things. Why don't you go to a
furniture store and get what you want first-hand? Second-hand furniture
always looks shabby and out of date. However, if Miss Bessie could go
with me to pick out things, I wouldn't mind taking a drive into the
country to see what we could find."

[Illustration: THE WORTH OF A COSY COTTAGE.]

"Now, really, wouldn't you mind it? How enchanting! It will be
delightful to be associated with the new house. I know we shall find
some _lovely_ things."

"All right. You shall have Bob and the express wagon to-morrow. What
next, Jill?"

"'I should be glad to know your feeling in regard to height of rooms,
but shall not promise fully to agree with you. My purpose is to make
the principal rooms of the first story ten and a-half or eleven feet
high.'"

"Oh, how dreadful! I don't know how high eleven feet is, but I'm sure
they ought not to be more than seven feet."

"I thought you were going to say not less than fourteen," said Jim.

"Oh, no, indeed! Low rooms are so deliciously quaint and cosy."

"But I should be all the time expecting to hit my head."

"You wouldn't think of that for a moment if you could only feel the
influence of Kitty Kane's library. It is a copy of an old English
bar-room, or something of that sort, I don't exactly remember what, but
it is in the Queen Anne style, and it's too lovely for anything. Please
have low rooms, Jill."

Jill continued reading: "For rooms of ordinary sizes and devoted to
ordinary domestic purposes, that is high enough for use, for comfort
and for any reasonable amount of decoration, either upon the walls
themselves or in the shape of pictures or other ornaments. You will
certainly think it enough when you are climbing the stairs to the rooms
of the second story. It may be practicable to reduce the height of some
of the smaller apartments, but it is usually much more convenient to
keep the ceilings of the main rooms of uniform height, even if this
does upset the 'correct proportion' which critics attempt in vain to
establish. To make ceilings very low seems an affectation of humility
or of antiquity not