morning,
noon
Bob is somewhat fastidious , difficult to please , fond of domesticities and individualities ; and such a man never can fit himself into a house built by another , and accordingly housebuilding has always been his favorite mental recreation . During all his courtship , as much time was taken up in planning a future house as if he had money to build one ; and all Marianne 's patterns , and the backs of half their letters , were scrawled with ground-plans and elevations . But latterly this chronic disposition has been quickened into an acute form by the falling-in of some few thousands to their domestic treasury , -- left as the sole residuum of a painstaking old aunt , who took it into her head to make a will in Bob 's favor , leaving , among other good things , a nice little bit of land in a rural district half an hour 's railroad ride from Boston . So now ground-plans thicken , and my wife is being consulted morning , noon , and night ; and I never come into the room without finding their heads close together over a paper , and hearing Bob expatiate on his favorite idea of a library . He appears to have got so far as this , that the ceiling is to be of carved oak , with ribs running to a boss overhead , and finished mediævally with ultramarine blue and gilding , -- and then away he goes sketching Gothic patterns of bookshelves which require only experienced carvers , and the wherewithal to pay them , to be the divinest things in the world . Marianne is exercised about china-closets and pantries , and about a bedroom on the ground-floor , -- for , like all other women of our days , she expects not to have strength enough to run upstairs oftener than once or twice a week ; and my wife , who is a native genius in this line , and has planned in her time dozens of houses for acquaintances , wherein they are at this moment living happily , goes over every day with her pencil and ruler the work of rearranging the plans , according as the ideas of the young couple veer and vary . One day Bob is importuned to give two feet off from his library for a closet in the bedroom , but resists like a Trojan .