Then attention should be turned to the chairs, and if expense bars them from being re-covered in soft brown leather, and take my word for it, there’s ‘nothing like leather’ where dining-room chairs are concerned, we can either fall back on ‘Pantasote,’ a species of crocodile-looking material sold by any upholsterer, or we can use stamped and ribbed velveteen from Shoolbred, or Wallace’s frisé velvet in golden brown, which will transform the chairs at once, and bring them into harmony with their surroundings, the while new yellow diamond serge curtains are hung, and a diamond serge tablecloth, with a darker velveteen or frisé velvet border laid on is placed on the table. If the awful sideboard must be kept, we must make it as bearable as we can by placing a coarse linen and Greek lace cloth on it which exactly fits the top, and just, and only just, hangs over the edge. We can keep three plants there when the sideboard is not in use at meal-times, but should, as a matter of course, allow nothing whatever in the way of plate and dinner-table accessories to spoil the appearance of the room. Such a room would be quite simple, quite inexpensive, yet always a joy to live in, especially if the rules of plain paint, ivory-coloured cornice and papered ceilings are adhered to here as elsewhere. Trifles these things may be, but on trifles depend success in furnishing, which never can be perfect if the smallest matter is passed over which is not quite what it ought to be merely because it is too ‘trivial to matter.’