It will seem to my readers that one has to take endless trouble, to see perpetually about endless trifles, as long as we are householders, and have the management of a family on our hands. Yet once started on good lines, and matters are not so difficult as they appear; still, of course, no life of great responsibility--indeed, no life at all--can ever be entirely happy and entirely easy. Those who have least to do become bored and tired by mere inactivity; those who have most, wearing out instead of rusting out. All comes to an end some day; there is no doubt about that. Strive as we may, death waits for us all, and our carefully trained household falls apart and drifts away; our furniture wears out, our carefully amassed hoards are turned over and parted among our successors; some one else takes our house, and obliterates with his personality the last traces of ours; and if we have refused to do our work, or let things slide, we shall speedily be forgotten; but if we have honestly done our work, what of it? Our maids carry on our good lessons elsewhere; our hoards make someone else happy, and the example we have set bears fruit a hundredfold, and someone is always happier, some household better for the work we have done. No matter, then, if we have fallen out of the ranks, tired out; we have done our work, and so can retire gracefully, being quite sure that none of our trouble is wasted, and that not one of us has toiled in vain. And I maintain that we cannot ever take too much trouble about our homes, that we cannot have them too pretty or too well managed, and that, moreover, once they are started, they are easy to keep going, always supposing that we have regular ways and rules, that we do not muddle, and that we pass over nothing that requires attention, let it be a braid off a chair, or the misdemeanour or disobedience of a servant or child; the one should be mended, the other spoken to at once, then things will go on like clockwork, and we shall be fairly astonished to find how well things progress and how admirably they manage themselves. Start well, start carefully, and then all one has to do is to steer straight; after all, steering is not very hard work, and that is all one has to do once the ship is fairly loaded and under way. CHAPTER XI. THE SICK ROOM.