The larder should be ventilated in the same way, and any windows should be covered with very fine wire-netting on the side they do not open--outside, if they are the ordinary small sash windows, inside, should they push outwards on an iron support--to prevent cats, dogs and small animals of any kind from entering, while great care should be taken to see that the larder is damp-proof. Nothing keeps in a damp larder, and, therefore if it should be damp it is utterly useless to try and put meat, bread and butter there. In any case if one has not tiles, and I never yet met with the suburban larder that had, the walls should be painted from top to bottom, first with Chambers’s damp-resisting fluid, and then with a couple of coats of Aspinall’s enamel paint in a shade of ivory white. No one should permit the decorator to talk him or her out of using this most invaluable preparation, for nothing I can assure my readers, can take its place. I have had eight years’ constant experience of it. I have had many years’ experience of the ordinary paint, and I confidently say that it and Aspinall are not to be mentioned together in any shape or form, therefore everyone should insist on its use. The decorator I fancy does not get quite as much profit on it as on the ordinary paint, and it is more trouble to apply I know, and these perhaps are his reasons for his undoubted dislike to it; but if my readers are wise, they will insist on Aspinall, especially where damp has to be considered, and where a good surface and uniform colouring are in request. The larder should have one wide shelf, and in one corner should be a safe for meat, and poultry, with very fine wire-netting all round. This should be able to be moved and hung out in a shady corner in the garden in the summer if the larder should be warm at all, or else hung in the cellar if there be no garden. Here too should be placed the refrigerator, without which no house is complete, and which soon saves its own cost, in the manner it allows one to keep one’s provisions sweet, and one’s milk right, and one’s butter from running away, as it otherwise does at the smallest amount of heat. The larder floor should be tiled, if not it must be ‘gone over’ every day with a mop dipped in Sanitas and water to take up the dust and make it fresh and clean; then the food should be nicely arranged for the mistress’s visit of inspection, while once a week the larder must be thoroughly scrubbed out, shelf and all, the shelf being washed over with a damp duster daily, when the floor is done over with the ever-useful mop. The same treatment should be given to the scullery, where the sinks should be flushed daily, and which should never be without their big lump of soda in one corner to prevent the grease accumulating.