Let us now enter one of the doorways that leads into a better class house. We find ourselves first of all in a round or octagonal porch, covered by a small dome, which is generally pierced in the centre to admit light. From this porch we go through a passage into one of the court-yards. In a good house there are two, or even three court-yards. The whole family live in the better compound, and the men receive their visitors in the smaller one. Though this rule is not without exception, the better class women in Yezd do not seem to have much to complain of in the matter of housing. In the court-yard there will be found an open tank and some flower-beds; the rest is generally paved. The flower-beds are below the level of the pavement, and are irrigated from the tank. Watering-pots are used for watering the pavement only. Sometimes the whole garden is sunk to the level of the cellar floor, so as to get nearer to the _qan’at_. The house itself consists of two sets of buildings, chiefly one story, with perhaps one or two upstairs rooms. The upper rooms, however, do not really form a separate story, but are built over the lowest of the ground-floor rooms, so as to bring the roof more or less to one level. The roofs are generally paved with flat bricks of the shape of tiles, and are surrounded by a low mud wall, so as to form a more or less secluded and cool place, where the family may sleep in summer. Perhaps a dome may partially project above the level of the rest of the roof. Also there is the inevitable _bād-gīr_, or square air-shaft, running down to the back of the big summer portico, or _tālār_, and furnished at the top with long slits on all four sides to catch any air that may be moving. This _talar_ is the principal room on the summer side, which faces north. It is often built in the form of a cross with very stumpy arms, or rather of an oblong with the corners so taken off as to render it slightly cruciform. The long side of the oblong faces the court-yard, and has no wall at all, but there is a curtain of tent-cloth that moves up and down on pulleys. To the right and left of this sun-blind are short walled-off passages, which are used as entrances. Corresponding to the projecting front part between the passages there is at the back a recess under the _bad-gir_, completing the cruciform design. The roof is arched into a high dome. The whole _talar_ is raised three feet above the level of the garden, so as to give room for a two-foot upright grating, which is the window of the cellar room underneath. For five months in the year these are the only habitable rooms in a Persian house; and they are both furnished as living-rooms. The rooms on either side of the _talar_ are so like the winter rooms that it is unnecessary to describe them separately.