"I think," said Barbara, boldly, "that a cooking-stove, all polished up, is just as handsome a thing as there is in a house!"
"It is clumsy, one must own," said Mrs. Holabird, "besides being suggestive."
"So is a piano," said the determined Barbara.
"I can imagine a cooking-stove," said Rosamond, slowly.
"Well, do! That's just where your gift will come in!"
"A pretty copper tea-kettle, and a shiny tin boiler, made to order,—like an urn, or something,—with a copper faucet, and nothing else ever about, except it were that minute wanted; and all the tins and irons begun with new again, and kept clean; and little cocoanut dippers with German silver rims; and things generally contrived as they are for other kinds of rooms that ladies use; it might be like that little picnicking dower-house we read about in a novel, or like Marie Antoinette's Trianon."
"That's what it would come to, if it was part of our living, just as we come to have gold thimbles and lovely work-boxes. We should give each other Christmas and birthday presents of things; we should have as much pleasure and pride in it as in the china-closet. Why, the whole trouble is that the kitchen is the only place taste hasn't got into. Let's have an art-kitchen!"
"We might spend a little money in fitting up a few things freshly, if we are to save the waste and expense of a servant," said Mrs. Holabird.
The idea grew and developed.
"But when we have people to tea!" Rosamond said, suddenly demurring afresh.