They and I | Page 9

an estimate from the Railway
Company. I wanted it on a hill. It is on a hill, with a bigger hill in front
of it. I didn't want that other hill. I wanted an uninterrupted view of the
southern half of England. I wanted to take people out on the step, and
cram them with stories about our being able on clear days to see the

Bristol Channel. They might not have believed me, but without that hill
I could have stuck to it, and they could not have been certain--not dead
certain--I was lying.
"Personally, I should have liked a house where something had
happened. I should have liked, myself, a blood-stain--not a fussy
blood-stain, a neat unobtrusive blood-stain that would have been
content, most of its time, to remain hidden under the mat, shown only
occasionally as a treat to visitors. I had hopes even of a ghost. I don't
mean one of those noisy ghosts that doesn't seem to know it is dead. A
lady ghost would have been my fancy, a gentle ghost with quiet, pretty
ways. This house--well, it is such a sensible-looking house, that is my
chief objection to it. It has got an echo. If you go to the end of the
garden and shout at it very loudly, it answers you back. This is the only
bit of fun you can have with it. Even then it answers you in such a tone
you feel it thinks the whole thing silly--is doing it merely to humour
you. It is one of those houses that always seems to be thinking of its
rates and taxes."
"Any reason at all for your having bought it?" asked Dick.
"Yes, Dick," I answered. "We are all of us tired of this suburb. We
want to live in the country and be good. To live in the country with any
comfort it is necessary to have a house there. This being admitted, it
follows we must either build a house or buy one. I would rather not
build a house. Talboys built himself a house. You know Talboys. When
I first met him, before he started building, he was a cheerful soul with a
kindly word for everyone. The builder assures him that in another
twenty years, when the colour has had time to tone down, his house
will be a picture. At present it makes him bilious, the mere sight of it.
Year by year, they tell him, as the dampness wears itself away, he will
suffer less and less from rheumatism, ague, and lumbago. He has a
hedge round the garden; it is eighteen inches high. To keep the boys out
he has put up barbed- wire fencing. But wire fencing affords no real
privacy. When the Talboys are taking coffee on the lawn, there is
generally a crowd from the village watching them. There are trees in
the garden; you know they are trees--there is a label tied to each one

telling you what sort of tree it is. For the moment there is a similarity
about them. Thirty years hence, Talboys estimates, they will afford him
shade and comfort; but by that time he hopes to be dead. I want a house
that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life
bringing up a young and inexperienced house."
"But why this particular house?" urged Robin, "if, as you say, it is not
the house you wanted."
"Because, my dear girl," I answered, "it is less unlike the house I
wanted than other houses I have seen. When we are young we make up
our minds to try and get what we want; when we have arrived at years
of discretion we decide to try and want what we can get. It saves time.
During the last two years I have seen about sixty houses, and out of the
lot there was only one that was really the house I wanted. Hitherto I
have kept the story to myself. Even now, thinking about it irritates me.
It was not an agent who told me of it. I met a man by chance in a
railway carriage. He had a black eye. If ever I meet him again I'll give
him another. He accounted for it by explaining that he had had trouble
with a golf ball, and at the time I believed him. I mentioned to him in
conversation I was looking for a house. He described this place to me,
and it seemed to me hours before the train stopped at a station. When it
did I got out and took the next train back. I did not even wait for lunch.
I had my bicycle with me, and I went straight there. It was--well, it was