"Fitness and comfort are indispensable requisites for domestic architecture, to use your own argument. Are you quite sure that yonder castellated roof, for instance, is quite suited to the deep snows of these mountains?"
John Effingham whistled, and endeavoured to look unconcerned, for he well knew that the very first winter had demonstrated the unsuitableness of his plans for such a climate. He had actually felt disposed to cause the whole to be altered privately, at his own expense; but, besides feeling certain his cousin would resent a liberty that inferred his indisposition to pay for his own buildings, he had a reluctance to admit, in the face of the whole country, that he had made so capital a mistake, in a branch of art in which he prided himself rather more than common; almost as much as his predecessor in the occupation, Mr. Richard Jones.
"If you are not pleased with your own dwelling, Ned," he answered, "you can have, at least, the consolation of looking at some of your neighbours' houses, and of perceiving that they are a great deal worse off. Of all abortions of this sort, to my taste, a Grecian abortion is the worst--mine is only Gothic, and that too, in a style so modest, that I should think it might pass unmolested."
It was so unusual to see John Effingham on the defensive, that the whole party smiled, while Aristabulus who stood in salutary fear of his caustic tongue, both smiled and wondered.
"Nay, do not mistake me, John," returned the proprietor of the edifice under discussion--"it is not your taste that I call in question, but your provision against the seasons. In the way of mere outward show, I really think you deserve high praise, for you have transformed a very ugly dwelling into one that is almost handsome, in despite of proportions and the necessity of regulating the alterations by prescribed limits. Still, I think, there is a little of the composite left about even the exterior."
"I hope, cousin Jack, you have not innovated on the interior," cried Eve; "for I think I shall remember that, and nothing is more pleasant than the cattism of seeing objects that you remember in childhood--pleasant, I mean, to those whom the mania of mutation has not affected."
"Do not be alarmed, Miss Effingham," replied her kinsman, with a pettishness of manner that was altogether extraordinary, in a man whose mien, in common, was so singularly composed and masculine; "you will find all that you knew, when a kitten, in its proper place. I could not rake together, again, the ashes of Queen Dido, which were scattered to the four winds of Heaven, I fear; nor could I discover a reasonably good bust of Homer; but respectable substitutes are provided, and some of them have the great merit of puzzling all beholders to tell to whom they belong, which I believe was the great characteristic of most of Mr. Jones's invention."
"I am glad to see, cousin Jack, that you have, at least, managed to give a very respectable 'cloud-colour' to the whole house."
"Ay, it lay between that and an invisible green," the gentleman answered, losing his momentary spleen in his natural love of the ludicrous--"but finding that the latter would be only too conspicuous in the droughts that sometimes prevail in this climate, I settled down into the yellowish drab, that is, indeed, not unlike some of the richer volumes of the clouds."
"On the whole, I think you are fairly entitled, as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire, would say, to 'the meed of our thanks.'"