"In changing the courses you can set the soiled plates on the sideboard, to save leaving the room, provided you have the next course there; or, if you like, you can have a low two-shelved serving-table on casters close by your side at the table. You can put the plates on this if you can easily reach them, as you can if you have a small round table for two, and if your next course is on one of the two shelves, instead of on the sideboard, you may be able to produce it from there and put it right on and not get up at all; that is a very easy way of doing." "You use a coffee machine, I see; do you like it better than the old way of making the coffee in the kitchen?" "Without a maid I certainly do. I light this before dinner, and when we are ready it is there, ready for us, and I do not have to go out for it." "Single-handed housekeeping has its ways of doing of which people never dream who have always had maids to wait on them. I think that all sounds simple enough." "It is simple, and yet it is nice, and things go smoothly. Now, next I want to say some things about having dinner at night, for that is one of my hobbies. I believe it is by far the easiest way to manage when one is to be the cook as well as the lady of the house." "Most people don't think so, I fancy." "Well, but they have not tried it, perhaps. It is a tradition in many places, especially in the country, to have dinner at noon and supper at night, on the ground that supper is the easy meal to get and clear away, but I maintain that it makes one work all day. Now listen: Suppose you are to have dinner at noon. After breakfast you must hurry and do up the dishes and get the house in order; go to market as early as possible, in order that the food may come home in good season; come back, make dessert, lay the dinner-table, and as soon as your orders arrive, clean the vegetables, put the meat on to cook, and generally prepare the meal. If it is ready by half-past twelve or one o'clock you have been busy every single moment since you got up. Then after dinner there are all the dishes to wash and put away and the supper to begin, unless that you have done in the morning with the other things. By three o'clock you have finished, but you are all tired out, if you are a normal woman of average strength.