AT DINNER--WEIGHT--WATCHING--JOKES--PROTEST--AWKWARD SITUATION--AN ANNOUNCEMENT--INQUIRY--ARRIVAL--PRACTICAL JOKES 206 CHAPTER XXVII. FIFTH WEEK--DIFFICULTIES--HINTS--BOODELS' SECRET--ARRIVAL OF JIMMY LAYDER--A CHANGE--PRACTICAL JOKES--PLAYING THE FOOL--DRESSING UP-- MORE JOKES--CHEMICAL LECTURE--EXPERIMENTS--RESULTS--OPEN WINDOWS-- COLDS--DEPARTURES--SMALL BY DEGREES--BEAUTIFULLY LESS--THE SHILLING AND THE TUMBLER--BOODELS' LAST--TWO'S COMPANY--CONCLUSION 209 HAPPY THOUGHT HALL. CHAPTER I. THE IDEA--ADVICE--TITLE--PLAN--ON PAPER--SUGGESTION--COST--BOODELS-- OLD FRIENDS--JENKYNS SOAMES--DESIGNS--STAIRCASES--BAYS--OBJECTIONS-- ORDER OF ARCHITECTURE--STABLES--PRICE--GIVEN UP--CAZELL'S IDEA. _Happy Thought._--To get a country house for the winter. To fill it with friends. To have one wing for bachelors. Another wing for maidens with _chaperons_. To have the _Nave_, as it were, of the house, for the married people. "I'll tell you what you ought to do," says Cazell to me. "You ought to build a nice little snuggery in the country." I object to the cost. "Cost? Bah! that's nothing. You can always get a Building Society," says he, enthusiastically, "to advance you _any_ sum." I ask how these Building Societies proceed. [Illustration: CAZELL.] "Simply enough," says Cazell, who invariably knows everything about anything, only if you act on his information and go wrong, he generally denies warmly afterwards that "he ever said such a thing." "Simply enough," he continues. "You go to the Society, you give 'em some security,--any security will do, and you could get _that_ easily enough." I nod cheerfully, more to encourage him to proceed, than from any feeling of certainty as to the means of obtaining the security. Then, having, satisfactorily to himself, disposed of this difficulty, he continues:--"Well, your security in this case would be your title-deeds of the house and land." _Happy Thought._--Title-deeds. "Then," he goes on, as if he'd been accustomed to do this sort of thing every day, "you say how much you want. Then they ask you" (it's becoming quite dramatic), "where's your house? You say .... wherever it is, you know." Cazell puts it in this way, as impressing upon me that before the Building Society I _must_ tell the truth and not pretend to them that my house is in Bedfordshire, for example, when it isn't. "Well," he resumes, "then they ask you what sort of a house do you intend to build? Then, you lay your plan before them." _Happy Thought._--The Plan of my House. "They examine it, that is, their architect does ... they inquire about the land ... and then they decide, whether they'll buy it for you, or not." ("_Not_" I should think, but I don't say so.)