Another problem--should we do away with the nursery--is, What is to become of the nurse? You may call her a maid and give her your garments to look after, and tell her she must now take on her the work of a maid, but she will never do this properly; she will miss her room and her occupation, and she will move about miserably, missing the children and yet not knowing what she misses, and will neither be useful nor pleasant. But leave her her nursery, and one child if possible, and she will be quite happy; and, much as we may hanker after a maid, the ideal creature who shall never have to be told that buttons are off or skirts torn, who shall make our every-day dresses and retrim our bonnets, we owe something to the nurse who has looked after the children at the worst and most critical time of their lives, and are bound, if we cannot afford the two luxuries, to sacrifice the maid and cling to the nurse. And be quite sure if we do we shall be rewarded; the children may be grown up, but even grown-up folks have colds and headaches, and sometimes worse ailments than these, and who so fit to keep watch over these ailments as the nurse, who has gallantly steered us through measles, whooping-cough, and the thousand ailments other people’s selfishness is always handing on from generation to generation?--no one, surely; and if she and the nursery are retained together, there is always someone who knows what to do in an emergency, and a place to go to to be petted and quieted and made much of, as only a nurse can do who has had her nurslings from the first and loves them as only their mother and nurse know how to love. We have two such nurses in our family: I one, my sister the other, and I can never advise doing away with any nursery when I remember all that this may probably mean to others beside the householders themselves. In a large house, therefore--a house where, let us hope, people mean to stay some years--this is an extra reason for making the nursery as pretty as possible. One cannot be very sentimental over a schoolroom; there is always a suspicion of ogre’s castle about that room, and it can invariably be turned into the girls’ sitting-room or into a billiard-room at the earliest opportunity, but all the sentiment of the home is to be found in the nursery, where the children are without a care or a trouble, and where they are gaining strength and health for the battle of life; therefore, let us never grudge any money we can afford being spent upon the nursery. As I said before, I always consider blue by far the pleasantest colour to live with, which is one reason why I advocate blue in the nursery; but of course endless combinations of colour could be had which would be equally pleasing and successful, but not as nice to live with always. However, I will give one or two which might perhaps be liked better by people who are not as fully convinced as I am on the merits of blue.