If you have a garden, encourage the servants to walk and sit and work in it; and, above all, take interest in their clothes, lend them patterns, and, in fact, do all in your power to raise them to your station. The lower classes, thanks to education, are rapidly climbing; they will rise whether we like it or not, and we had better, on the lowest grounds, assist them to share the place they will take and push us from, should they find we are antagonistic and jealous instead of helpful and sympathising. I have had twenty years’ experience of household management. I have had three cooks in the time, and have never had a maid give me ‘warning’; and though, no doubt, some day I shall find servants a ‘bother,’ because they will get married, and I cannot expect to keep mine all their lives, I think my twenty years of success entitle me to lay down the law on the subject of the management of one’s maids just a little. But, lest my readers should tire of the subject, I will pass on to the nurseries, which, after all, are much more interesting to the young housekeeper. CHAPTER XV. THE NURSERIES. There are several things of course to be considered in the first choice of a nursery, and, unfortunately, in far too many cases economy has to be considered even before what is really and actually good for a child’s health. ‘Economy: how I dislike that word!’ remarked a plaintive friend, actually of the sterner sex, and how I agree with him only my own soul knows; but economy is a stern, a hard fact, and above all has it to be considered when expenses begin to advance by ‘leaps and bounds,’ and Edwin regards the future, across the berceaunette, most dolefully; and thinking over school bills and doctors’ bills, much in the distance yet, but steadily advancing towards him, begins to wonder how two hands are to do it all, and whether he had not better at once look up all the papers he can possess himself of that relate to State emigration. It is hard for me to keep the ‘juste milieu,’ for I am really possessed by the idea of good nurseries; and when I recollect how much money is wasted on keeping up appearances, and also in retaining that ‘spare room,’ I almost feel inclined to throw prudence to the winds, and declare that two good nurseries are as imperative for one child as I believe in my heart they are. And, really, even in the orthodox suburban villa, with its four or five bedrooms, this accommodation can be found, if only Angelina uses her senses, and really desires to do her best for her little ones. But this is not always the case, I am sorry to say, and there is no doubt that in most houses the position of the nurseries is a subject of very small interest. So long as it is tolerably out of the way, and, in fact, ‘far from humanity’s reach,’ most parents are quite satisfied, and ask little else than that their ears may not be assaulted by cries, and their china shaken to its very foundations by little feet