Audrey laughed. "That wonderful house of yours! How perfect it will be!"
"It will be a perfect dear; but I don't want it to be perfect in any other way—not at first, I mean. I want to make it so. Well, as I was saying when you rudely interrupted me by scoffing—when I have a house of my own, you shall come to stay with me, and you shall have breakfast in bed every morning; and you shall not touch a duster, or wash a dish, or make a bed. Oh, Audrey! it is going to be such a dear little gem of a place, with large sunny windows opening on to the garden, and a balcony outside each bedroom."
"How lovely!" sighed Audrey. "I wish you had it now. I'd love to be sitting in one of your balconies, looking down at your flowers. Of course, you would have crowds of flowers?"
"Oh, crowds—and apple-blossom, and honeysuckle, and pear and cherry trees."
"I would sit there and read, and write and write. Oh, Irene, I think I should go crazy with delight."
"No, you would not," laughed Irene. "When I saw you getting so I would come and put a wet dishcloth in your hands, and bang a wash-bowl behind you. That would bring you down to sober earth again."
Audrey groaned, and laughed. "I wonder when, or if ever, you will have your little paradise," she questioned wistfully.
"Oh, I shall have it, but not for rather a long time yet. At least, I am afraid it will be a long time. You see, I have to work for it first, and I don't leave off lessons for another year yet. Then I am going to study Domestic Science, and then I shall begin to earn money. You see, I have got to earn enough to buy my cottage, before I can have it."
Audrey groaned again. "Why, you will be ninety, and I shall be eighty-nine—far too old to sit on a balcony—it will be too risky. And if you are still energetic enough to bang your wash-bowl, I shall be too deaf to hear it."
"Indeed, I shall not be ninety. I am going to try hard to be a lecturer, and I shall get quite a lot of money, and grandfather says he will sell me the cottage—he has got the very one I want—for a hundred pounds, as soon as I am twenty-one. Won't it be lovely, Audrey?"