This finishes the breakfast. It does not take more than ten or fifteen minutes; indeed, people pride themselves upon their quickness at meals, especially at breakfast, as it implies that they have no time to dawdle over their food, which is taken solely to ward off hunger and maintain their health and strength. But it must be admitted that indigestion not unfrequently follows these hurried meals, to which children are early taught to habituate themselves by parental instruction and by a proverb which puts quickness at meals as an accomplishment on a level with swiftness of foot. When the breakfast is over, the trays, plates, and other utensils are taken back into the kitchen, washed, and put away until they are needed for the next meal. The wooden tub of rice is put into a straw casing in winter to prevent its getting cold and hard and on a stand in a cool, breezy place in summer to keep it from sweating. Let us next turn to the kitchen and see how it is arranged. The kitchen varies very much in size; but the commonest range from six to sixteen square yards, that is, it would, if it were matted, hold from three to eight mats. But the floor is usually entirely boarded, though in a large kitchen a mat or two are laid for the servants to sit on. There is a space of ground at the entrance for leaving clogs in, and another on which the sink is set. The most prominent feature of the kitchen is the hearth for cooking rice. It is made of a shallow wooden box, on which a square plaster casing is built with a round hole at the top and an aperture at a side. On the hole the rice-pot is put; and the side-opening is used for feeding the hearth with small faggots which are kept in a cavity under the wooden box. The hearth is as often as not double, and over the other hole the soup-pot is set. The plaster between the two holes is often replaced by a copper boiler for boiling water with the heat of the faggots under the two pots. Over the hearth is a skylight in the roof, for the part of the house where the kitchen is situated is always one-storied; and a sliding shutter is moved up and down along the incline of the roof and fastened by a cord. The skylight is useful on a fine calm day as an outlet for the smoke of the hearth; but when a wind blows against the roof or the rain comes pouring in, it has to be closed at the time when it is most needed, for if the skylight is closed, the windows are also shut, with the result that the smoke spreads over the whole house. In some houses, therefore, chimney-flues have taken the place of skylights, which are, moreover, as has already been observed, among the burglar’s favourite means of ingress. [Illustration: THE KITCHEN.]