The young people regarded one another. It was dreadfully like giving an order.
"How many bedrooms, for example?" asked the architect.
"One?" suggested Kipps, inclined now to minimise at any cost.
"There's Gwendolen," said Ann.
"Visitors perhaps," said the architect, and temperately, "You never know."
"Two, p'raps?" said Kipps. "We don't want no more than a little 'ouse, you know."
"But the merest shooting-box——," said the architect.
They got to six; he beat them steadily from bedroom to bedroom, the word "nursery" played across their imaginative skies—he mentioned it as the remotest possibility—and then six being reluctantly conceded, Ann came forward to the table, sat down and delivered herself of one of her prepared conditions: "'Ot and cold water," she said, "laid on to each room—any'ow."
It was an idea long since acquired from Sid.
"Yes," said Kipps, on the hearthrug, "'Ot and cold water laid on to each bedroom—we've settled on that."