“Polish brass,” said Norah, beginning on a window-catch. “When I grow up I think I’ll be an architect, and then I’ll make the sort of house that women will care to live in.”
“What sort’s that?” asked Jim.
“I don’t know what the outside will be like. But it won’t have any brass to keep clean, or any skirting-boards with pretty tops to catch dust, or any corners in the rooms. Brownie and I used to talk about it. All the cupboards will be built in, so’s no dust can get under them, and the windows will have some patent dodge to open inwards when they want cleaning. And there’ll be built-in washstands in every room, with taps and plugs——”
“Brass taps?” queried Wally.
“Certainly not.”
“What then?”
“Oh—something. Something that doesn’t need to be kept pretty. And then there will be heaps of cupboard-room and heaps of shelf-room—only all the shelves will be narrow, so that nothing can be put behind anything else.”
“Whatever do you mean?” asked Jim.
“She means dead mice—you know they get behind bottles of jam,” said Wally kindly. “Go on, Nor, you talk like a book.”
“Well, dead mice are as good as anything,” said Norah lucidly. “There won’t be any room for their corpses on my shelves. And I’ll have some arrangement for supplying hot water through the house that doesn’t depend on keeping a huge kitchen fire alight.”