rushing and jumping overhead in a way that is undoubtedly trying to the nerves, but is very delightful to those who see in such noises ample evidence of the health and good spirits of the small folk who are making them. Perhaps, however, the ‘demon builder,’ the cause of so very many of our domestic woes and worries, is as much to blame as the people who take the houses he runs up for us. Still, demand creates supply, and I cannot help thinking that, if the British matron insisted on nurseries as well as the regulation ‘three reception-rooms’ of the house-agents’ lists, in time we should be provided with large airy chambers, as much a matter of course as the bath-room of recent years, that, once conspicuous by its absence, in now a _sine quâ non_ in even tiny houses built for clerks, and rented at about 30_l._ a year. I am very much divided in in my mind as to the manner in which to write this chapter, as I cannot determine whether to describe an ideal nursery--the nursery in which we were all brought up--or the orthodox nursery, made out of the worst bedroom in the house, the one farthest away from the sitting-rooms, and where nothing is considered save how to prevent any visitors’ ears being assailed with shouts, and their nerves tried by sudden bangs immediately overhead. I am not in the least exaggerating when I say that, especially in London, the very top rooms in a tall house are those set aside for the little ones, Pass along any of our most fashionable squares and thoroughfares, and look up at the windows. Where are the necessary bars placed that denote the nurseries? Why, at the highest windows of all. My readers can notice this for themselves, and can say whether I am right or wrong. And how often do we not find an excellent spare room in a house where two, or perhaps even more, children are stuffed into one room that is day and night nursery combined, while half the year the best chamber is kept empty, sacred to an occasional guest, whose presence should never be courted at all in a house not large enough to allow of there being two nurseries for the children’s own use. I am the very last person in the world to make children into miniature tyrants; I do not allow mine to engross the conversation or to be in evidence at all hours of the day. They do not behave as if they were grown up at an early age, neither do they go out to luncheon or tea perpetually, thus becoming _blasé_ before their time. They are frankly children, and are treated as such, and I feel it rather necessary to say this at the outset, for fear my readers may feel constrained to write and tell me (after what I have said above) I have fallen into the prevailing error of the day, and make my children a nuisance to themselves and every one else by spoiling them; for, despite the usual position of the nursery, there is no doubt that children will soon cease to exist at all, and will become grown-up men and women before they have changed their teeth.