第14章 The House of Dreams(6)

Weren't all of us rocked in cradles? I think that the pendulum has swung far and it is time to swing back to where one man and one woman choose any little spot on God's footstool, build a nest and plan their lives in accord with personal desire and inclination instead of aping their neighbors.""Bravo!" cried Henry Anderson. "Miss Linda, if you see any suitable spot, and you think I would serve for a bug-catcher, won't you please stake the location?""Well, I don't know about that," said Linda. "Would it be the old case of 'I furnish the bread and you furnish the water'?""No," said Peter Morrison, "it would not. Henry is doing mighty well. I guarantee that he would furnish a cow that would produce real cream.""How joyous!" said Linda. "I feel quite competent to manage the bread question. We'll call that settled then. When I next cast an appraising eye over my beloved valley, I shan't select the choicest spot in it for Peter Morrison to write a book in; and Iwant to warn you people when you go hunting to keep a mile away from Marian's plot. She has had her location staked from childhood and has worked on her dream house until she has it all ready to put the ice in the chest and scratch the match for the living room fire-logs. The one thing she won't ever tell is where her location is, but wherever it is, Peter Morrison, don't you dare take it.""I wouldn't for the world," said Peter Morrison gravely. "If Miss Thorne will tell me even on which side of the valley her location lies, I will agree to stay on the other side.""Well there is one thing you can depend upon," said the irrepressible Linda before Marian had time to speak. "It is sure to be on the sunny side. Every living soul in California is looking for a place in the sun.""Then I will make a note of it," said Peter Morrison. "But isn't there enough sun in all this lovely valley that I may have a place in it too?""You go straight ahead and select any location you like," said Marian. "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 Imight 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.