“You’re temperate. You’ve got the sea at a stone’s throw all round. You don’t have notable extremes. But there’s our trouble. Your extremes when they come ain’t arranged for. There’s no heat like your English heat, and my word your English houses in the winter’d take some beating.”
“You mean boarding-houses.”
“Not entirely. Though I admit your English hoames are unique in the matter of comfort. There’s nothing in the world like a real good English hoame. And not only in the matter of comfort.”
“Yes but look here von Heber. I know your fine English parlours with fine great fires to sit around, what they call ‘cosy’ over here, but my life why don’t they warm their corridors and sleeping rooms?”
“We don’t because it’s unhealthy. A cold bedroom keeps you hardy and you sleep better.”
“And not only warm them but light them. My word when they take you out of their warm parlours into cold corridors and land you in an ice-house with a little bit of a flickering candle.”
“You’re not tempted to read in bed and you go to sleep in healthy bracing air; it keeps you hardy.”
“Do you never read after you retire?”
“I do; and have the gas and a lamp to keep warm. I like warm rooms and I think in many ways it must be lovely to be able to wear muslin dresses indoors in snowy weather and put on a fur coat to go out; but I should be sorry to see the American warm house idea introduced into England.”
“You’re willing to be inconsistent then.”