The average woman does not want a house, in the ordinary sense of the word. What she wants is something made by a genii. You have found, as you think, the ideal house. You show her the Adams fireplace in the drawing-room. You tap the wainscoting of the hall with your umbrella: “Oak,” you impress upon her, “all oak.” You draw her attention to the view: you tell her the local legend. By fixing her head against the window-pane she can see the tree on which the man was hanged. You dwell upon the sundial; you mention for a second time the Adams fireplace.
“It’s all very nice,” she answers, “but where are the children going to sleep?”
If it isn’t the children, it’s the water. She wants water—wants to know where it comes from. You show her where it comes from.
“What, out of that nasty place!” she exclaims.
She is equally dissatisfied whether it be drawn from a well, or whether it be water that has fallen from heaven and been stored in tanks. She has no faith in Nature’s water. A woman never believes that water can be good that does not come from a water-works. Her idea appears to be that the Company makes it fresh every morning from some old family recipe.
If you do succeed in reconciling her to the water, then she feels sure that the chimneys smoke; they look as if they smoked. Why—as you tell her—the chimneys are the best part of the house. You take her outside and make her look at them. They are genuine sixteenth-century chimneys, with carving on them. They couldn’t smoke. They wouldn’t do anything so inartistic. She says she only hopes you are right, and suggests cowls, if they do.
After that she wants to see the kitchen—where’s the kitchen? You don’t know where it is. You didn’t bother about the kitchen. There must be a kitchen, of course. You proceed to search for the kitchen. When you find it she is worried because it is the opposite end of the house to the dining-room. You point out to her the advantage of being away from the smell of the cooking. At that she gets personal: tells you that you are the first to grumble when the dinner is cold; and in her madness accuses the whole male sex of being impractical. The mere sight of an empty house makes a woman fretful.
Of course the stove is wrong. The kitchen stove always is wrong. You promise she shall have a new one. Six months later she will want the old one back again: but it would be cruel to tell her this. The promise of that new stove comforts her. The woman never loses hope that one day it will come—the all-satisfying kitchen stove, the stove of her girlish dreams.