They and I | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1909 Bernhard Tauchnitz edition.

THEY AND I
by Jerome K. Jerome
CHAPTER I

"It is not a large house," I said. "We don't want a large house. Two
spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered place you see marked
there on the plan, next to the bathroom, and which will just do for a
bachelor, will be all we shall require--at all events, for the present.
Later on, if I ever get rich, we can throw out a wing. The kitchen I shall
have to break to your mother gently. Whatever the original architect
could have been thinking of--"
"Never mind the kitchen," said Dick: "what about the billiard-room?"
The way children nowadays will interrupt a parent is nothing short of a
national disgrace. I also wish Dick would not sit on the table, swinging
his legs. It is not respectful. "Why, when I was a boy," as I said to him,
"I should as soon have thought of sitting on a table, interrupting my
father--"
"What's this thing in the middle of the hall, that looks like a grating?"
demanded Robina.
"She means the stairs," explained Dick.
"Then why don't they look like stairs?" commented Robina.

"They do," replied Dick, "to people with sense."
"They don't," persisted Robina, "they look like a grating." Robina, with
the plan spread out across her knee, was sitting balanced on the arm of
an easy-chair. Really, I hardly see the use of buying chairs for these
people. Nobody seems to know what they are for--except it be one or
another of the dogs. Perches are all they want.
"If we threw the drawing-room into the hall and could do away with the
stairs," thought Robina, "we should be able to give a dance now and
then."
"Perhaps," I suggested, "you would like to clear out the house
altogether, leaving nothing but the four bare walls. That would give us
still more room, that would. For just living in, we could fix up a shed in
the garden; or--"
"I'm talking seriously," said Robina: "what's the good of a drawing-
room? One only wants it to show the sort of people into that one wishes
hadn't come. They'd sit about, looking miserable, just as well anywhere
else. If we could only get rid of the stairs--"
"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