their usual resting-place. The spare room should be a cheerful, flowery-looking room, as, indeed, should all bedrooms if possible, and, if a sofa cannot be squeezed in, one of Maple’s charming sofa-ottomans should be put there, and also an arm-chair and small table for books &c., for one’s guests sometimes have headaches, and, especially if we live in town and have up our country cousins, require occasionally half an hour’s rest after a long day’s sight-seeing; or after the drive in the sleepy country air, if the cases are reversed, and we, in our turn, are country cousins entertaining our London friends with our own special sights and sounds. No matter where the house is situated, every bedroom window should open at the top. This in London obviates a great many blacks flying in, as they do when the sash is thrown wide open at the bottom; an inch at the top seems to do more good than a yard anywhere else, and in the country prevents the deluges and spoiled paint and carpets caused by a sudden storm in the night, or, indeed, in the daytime, when the open window allows the tempest to enter bodily, as it were--unrecognised in the night, of course, unless one is awakened by any specially violent gust; and unseen by the housemaid in the day, who, whoever she may be, never seems to remember that such weather means that the windows should be immediately closed. Every single thing belonging to the spare room should be religiously kept for its own use: the brass can for hot water, the palm-leaf soiled-linen basket, the little black cupboard for boots, which also serves as a table, the pin-trays, and the pincushion--all should never be allowed to stray away, and matches in a box nailed to the wall should also never be forgotten any more than the candles in their fixed stands, and the various little ornaments upon the mantelpiece, which should include a very regularly wound and most trustworthy clock.