igher the big keeping-room,
with a huge fireplace confronting you, and room enough for--anything.
For games, for dancing, for a billiard table, for a grand piano, for a
hammock--or--"

"Say a sewing machine, a spinning-wheel or something useful."

"Anything you like, a studio or a picture gallery, for it is twice as
high as the other rooms, and lighted from the roof. At the right of
this, and with such a great wide door between them that they seem like
two parts of the same room, is the sitting-room, with another great
fireplace in the corner, bay window and a conservatory fronting the
wide entrance to the dining-room, at the farther end of which there is
still another grand fireplace, with a stained-glass window above it.
These three rooms--four, if we count the conservatory--are just as near
perfection as possible. Then see the long line of chambers, closets and
dressing-rooms running around the south and east sides, every one with
a southern window, and all communicating with the corridor that leads
from the keeping-room, yet sufficiently united to form a complete
family suite. The first floor--I mean the _one_ floor--is five or six
feet from the ground, so there can be no dampness in the rooms--and
just think what a cellar! Altogether too much for us."

"Indeed, there isn't. I'd have a bowling alley, a skating rink, a
machine shop, a tennis court, and--a rifle range. Yes, it _is_ a taking
plan, but there are two things that I don't understand. How can you
cover such a big box, and where is the cooking to be done?"

[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF "THE OAKS."]

"The old rule of two negatives applies. Even a one-story house must
have a roof, and the breadth of this makes a roof large enough to hold
not only the kitchen but the servants' room on the same upper level."

"A kitchen up stairs!" exclaimed Jack, for once startled into
solemnity.

"Aunt Melville considers this the crowning glory of the plan. Owing to
this elevation of the cooking range there is no back door, no back
yard, no chance for an uncouth or an unsightly precinct at either side
of the house."

"That would be something worth living for. I think, Jill, we had better
examine these plans a little farther."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVI.

A NEW WAY OF GETTING UP STAIRS AND A NEW MISSIONARY FIELD.

"The question of getting up stairs," said Jack, as they continued the
study of the one-story plan, "is at least an interesting one. It