“Oh, of course! we could get rid of the stairs,” I agreed. “It would be a bit awkward at first, when we wanted to go to bed. But I daresay we should get used to it. We could have a ladder and climb up to our rooms through the windows. Or we might adopt the Norwegian method and have the stairs outside.” “I wish you would be sensible,” said Robin. “I am trying to be,” I explained; “and I am also trying to put a little sense into you. At present you are crazy about dancing. If you had your way, you would turn the house into a dancing-saloon with primitive sleeping-accommodation attached. It will last six months, your dancing craze. Then you will want the house transformed into a swimming-bath, or a skating-rink, or cleared out for hockey. My idea may be conventional. I don’t expect you to sympathise with it. My notion is just an ordinary Christian house, not a gymnasium. There are going to be bedrooms in this house, and there’s going to be a staircase leading to them. It may strike you as sordid, but there is also going to be a kitchen: though why when building the house they should have put the kitchen— “Don’t forget the billiard-room,” said Dick. “If you thought more of your future career and less about billiards,” Robin pointed out to him, “perhaps you’d get through your Little-go in the course of the next few years. If Pa only had sense—I mean if he wasn’t so absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he would not have a billiard-table in the house.” “You talk like that,” retorted Dick, “merely because you can’t play.” “I can beat you, anyhow,” retorted Robin. “Once,” admitted Dick—“once in six weeks.” “Twice,” corrected Robin. “You don’t play,” Dick explained to her; “you just whack round and trust to Providence.” “I don’t whack round,” said Robin; “I always aim at something. When you try and it doesn’t come off, you say it’s ‘hard luck;’ and when I try and it does come off, you say it’s fluking. So like a man.” “You both of you,” I said, “attach too much importance to the score. When you try for a cannon off the white and hit it on the wrong side and send it into a pocket, and your own ball travels on and makes a losing hazard off the red, instead of being vexed with yourselves—” “If you get a really good table, governor,” said Dick, “I’ll teach you billiards.” I do believe Dick really thinks he can play. It is the same with golf. Beginners are invariably lucky. “I think I shall like it,” they tell you; “I seem to have the game in me, if you understand.”