Before I end this chapter I may just give some few hints as to what to do with our fireplaces when a fire is not necessary though, in my own case, an open Japanese umbrella suffices, because the temperature in England changes so quickly and so often that I scarcely can feel fires are an impossibility; but quite a pretty change in the room can be made by placing the sofa or the grand piano straight across the fireplace, of course removing fender, &c., and so making it appear as if it had vanished; while another nice effect is made with putting a fender made of virgin cork instead of the ordinary one, and filling up the grate with great ferns and flowering plants or cut flowers, frequently changed, for nothing save the ubiquitous aspidistra lives comfortably in this lowly and draughty situation. The cork fender should be filled with moss, and then jam pots sunk in it full of water; in these arrange your flowers: put a hand-basin in the grate itself, and bend large leaves of the _Filix mas._ fern over the edges; these completely cover the bars of the grate; then large peonies can be arranged in the basin, and the whole looks like a bank of flowers. This can only be managed in a country room, where flowers are plentiful; but not a bad fire-screen is made from a wire frame with a deep flower trough in front; ivy should be trained all over the frame, and then flowers and ferns can be arranged in the trough at it small cost. Let this, however, be done only in one room in the house. Never put it out of your power to have a fire whenever you feel cold. No one knows how much illness is saved by this small precaution. One or two things must also be remembered before we leave the dining-room altogether. Footstools must be provided, and by the side of the grate should hang a bass brush to keep the hearth tidy, a pair of bellows to coax a lazy fire, and a fan to screen any one who should dislike the blaze in their eyes; and the wall-paper will last all the longer if a Japanese paper fan is nailed in such a manner that the bristles of the brush rest on it and not on the wall; just as the carpet will last longer if the coalscuttle stands on its own small linoleum mat, which can be painted any colour with Aspinall’s paint, and will always wash clean, cheerfully every day. CHAPTER VIII. THE MORNING-ROOM.