“Joy!” gasped Mrs. Gregory Eggleston, turning on the electric current for breakfast coffee. “Isn’t it a luxury after you’ve been out late,” she said turning to her guest, Mrs. Bradford Reardon, “not to have to think of servants and be able to have breakfast like this at 10:30--with impunity! You know I think the kitchenette will rob domestics of house room!” “It certainly is a luxury to have a little cooking kit like this whether one has another home or not. And to have it as you have--within easy driving distance from the theater, where you and your friends can spend the night and breakfast like kings from this shiny apparatus. Besides,” she continued, “it’s amazing how a little 6′×5′ room (see plan 1) does solve the omnipresent question of how to live in the country and yet not have to depend on hotels to keep one comfortable while attending to the affairs of business and pleasure in the city.” “You’re right,” agreed Mrs. Eggleston, taking some chilled oranges out of the refrigerator under the table, “Gregory and I wanted the country for our growing kindergarten and yet it seemed impossible until we thought of this scheme. Gregory has so many interests in the city and you know how many I have that it seemed almost exile to leave it. If we didn’t have this place, I’d be on the road all the time, whereas now when I am home I can devote my entire time to the kiddies.” [Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_ A CORNER IN WALTER RUSSELL’S KITCHENETTE. THE STEEL UNIT KITCHEN CABINET IS USED HERE] DROPPING THE MAIDS “But,” she went on, “you’d be surprised how Gregory hated the idea at first of a manless or maidless entourage. He said he couldn’t bear to think of me messing with stoves, etc., and now you should see him! He loves it--he helps me too, and says it makes him think of our early days--and he loves me to wait on him and be alone with him.” “The kitchenette as the domestic canteen has come to stay,” Mrs. Reardon said, and then looking about her with an amused flash in her eye, “but your kitchenette, dear, is like an ordinary kitchen. The kitchenettes I’ve conjured up when thinking of them at all, have been little curtained slits in the wall in the corner of two rooms without bath, clothes closets without clothes, bathrooms without baths, washstands capped with shelves full of canned goods and gas appliances all permitting of cookery with every requisite for human food except the desire to eat it.” “Yes,” laughed Mrs. Eggleston, “I guess the only definition of a kitchenette is: a place to cook smaller than your previous one and smaller than any kitchen of any of your friends!”