"Indeed I do," said Bessie, taking Jack's proffered arm. "Odors are too delicious for anything. They are so refined and spiritual I'm sure I could live on them. I would far prefer the fragrance of a dish of strawberries to the fruit itself."
"We shall get along capitally then. You can smell of the berries and I'll eat them afterwards. You see now, Jill, the advantage of having a house built like this. Cousin Bessie proposes that we live on the fragrance of the food. It won't be necessary even to come to the dining-room. We can all stay in the parlor or in our chambers and absorb sustenance from the circumambient air, as the sprightly goldfish gathers honey from the inside of a glass ball."
"Please don't make fun of me, Cousin Jack, for I do truly revel in fragrance, and I'm sure your house is beautifully planned. Don't you think so, Mr. James?"
"I realty don't know much about such things. I never did like to know what I was going to have for dinner long beforehand—it makes me so awfully hungry."
"Precisely so, Jim; it gives you am appetite. I had the house planned in this way for that very purpose."
"Now that you have introduced the subject," said Jill, "I will tell you how I should have planned it. There should have been a 'cut-off' somewhere—a little lobby between the kitchen and the rest of the house, with a ventilating flue so large that neither smoke nor steam nor perfumed air could pass it without being caught up and carried to the sky. Of course these odors ought not to get away from the ventilator above the range, but the best contrivances are not proof against the carelessness of the cook when she is in a hurry—as she always is just before dinner."
When they returned to the sitting-room Bessie brought down a set of plans her father had sent for Jack and Jill to examine, thinking they would suit their lot and taste. They did suit the lot fairly, but Jill's mind was too fully made up to accept any change from her own plan. The exterior she approved cordially, but to Bessie's despair would not promise to imitate it, preferring to leave the outside to her architect without reserve.
While they were spoiling their eyes in the twilight Jack pressed the electric "button" that lighted the gas instantaneously all over the house, causing Bessie to cry out in protest against such a sudden transition. "It is so violent, so unlike the slow, sweet processes of nature. I never shall learn to like gas, and the electric light is absolutely horrid. Don't you love tapers, Mr. James?"
"Tapirs? I don't think I'm a judge; I never had one. I should rather have a tame zebra."
"Oh, I mean tapers for light!"