"I give you the freedom of the valley. There's not one
chance in ten thousand that you would find or see anything
attractive about the one secluded spot I have always hoped I
might some day own. '
"This is not fooling, then?" asked Peter Morrison. "You truly
have a place selected where you would like to live?"
"She truly has the spot selected and she truly has the house on
paper and it truly is a house of dreams," said Linda. "I dream
about it myself. When she builds it and lives in it awhile and
finds out all the things that are wrong with it, then I am going
to build one like it, only I shall eliminate all the mistakes she
has made."
"I have often wondered," said Henry Anderson, "if such a thing
ever happened as that people built a house and lived in it, say
ten years, and did not find one single thing about it that they
would change if they had it to build over again. I never have
heard of such a case. Have any of you?"
"I am sure no one has," said John Gilman meditatively, "and it's
a queer thing. I can't see why people don't plan a house the way
they want it before they build."
Marian turned to him--the same Marian he had fallen in love with
when they were children.
"Mightn't it be," she asked, "that it is due to changing
conditions caused by the rapid development of science and
invention? If one had built the most perfect house possible five
years ago and learned today that infinitely superior lighting and
heating l and living facilities could be installed at much less
expense and far greater convenience, don't you think that one
would want to change? Isn't life a series of changes? Mustn't
one be changing constantly to keep abreast of one's day and age?"
"Why, surely," answered Gilman, "and no doubt therein lies at
least part of the answer to Anderson's question.
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