They say all they want to say in five lines; I tried to
say all we wanted to say in ten. The result was hopeless. We both agreed
that we should hate to live in that sort of house. Celia indeed seemed
to feel that if I couldn't write better than that we couldn't afford to
live in a house at all.
"You don't seem to realise," I said, "that in the ordinary way people
pay _me_ for writing. This time, so far from receiving any money, I have
actually got to hand it out in order to get into print at all. You can
hardly expect me to give my best to an editor of that kind."
"I thought that the artist in you would insist on putting your best into
_everything_ that you wrote, quite apart from the money."
Of course after that the artist in me had to pull himself together. An
hour later it had delivered itself as follows:--
"WANTED, an unusual house. When I say unusual I mean that it mustn't
look like anybody's old house. Actually it should contain three
living-rooms and five bedrooms. One of the bedrooms may be a
dressing-room, if it is quite understood that a dressing-room does not
mean a cupboard in which the last tenant's housemaid kept her brushes.
The other four bedrooms must be a decent size and should get plenty of
sun.
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