"Anyhow," I said, "it was a rotten house."
"Wouldn't it be simpler," said Celia, "to put in an advertisement ourselves, describing exactly the sort of house we want? That's the way I always get servants."
"A house is so much more difficult to describe than a cook."
"Oh, but I'm sure you could do it. You describe things so well."
Feeling highly flattered, I retired to the library and composed.
For the first hour or so I tried to do it in the staccato language of house-agents. They say all they want to say in five lines; I tried to say all we wanted to say in ten. The result was hopeless. We both agreed that we should hate to live in that sort of house. Celia indeed seemed to feel that if I couldn't write better than that we couldn't afford to live in a house at all.
"You don't seem to realise," I said, "that in the ordinary way people pay me for writing. This time, so far from receiving any money, I have actually got to hand it out in order to get into print at all. You can hardly expect me to give my best to an editor of that kind."
"I thought that the artist in you would insist on putting your best into everything that you wrote, quite apart from the money."
Of course after that the artist in me had to pull himself together. An hour later it had delivered itself as follows:—
"WANTED, an unusual house. When I say unusual I mean that it mustn't look like anybody's old house. Actually it should contain three living-rooms and five bedrooms. One of the bedrooms may be a dressing-room, if it is quite understood that a dressing-room does not mean a cupboard in which the last tenant's housemaid kept her brushes. The other four bedrooms must be a decent size and should get plenty of sun. The exigencies of the solar system may make it impossible for the sun to be always there, but it should be around when wanted. With regard to the living-rooms, it is essential that they should not be square but squiggly. The drawing-room should be particularly squiggly; the dining-room should have at least an air of squiggliness; and the third room, in which I propose to work, may be the least squiggly of the three, but it must be inspiring, otherwise the landlord may not obtain his rent. The kitchen arrangements do not interest me greatly, but they will interest the cook, and for this reason should be as delightful as possible; after which warning anybody with a really bad basement on his hands will see the wisdom of retiring from the queue and letting the next man move up one. The bathroom should have plenty of space, not only for the porcelain bath which it will be expected to contain, but also (as is sometimes forgotten) for the bather after he or she has stepped out of the bath. The fireplaces should not be, as they generally are, utterly beastly. Owners of utterly beastly fireplaces may also move out of the queue, but they should take their places up at the end again in case they are wanted; for, if things were satisfactory otherwise, their claims might be considered, since even the beastliest fireplace can be dug out at the owner's expense and replaced with something tolerable.