I have already discussed one manner of disposing of the usual third room, but I hope most devoutly that the unparalleled sacrifice of devoting it to the use of the maids may never be required of anyone. For unless people can sit in their dining-room in the morning; and I cannot imagine anything more distasteful; the drawing-room or parlour must be turned into a regular hack room, and we are deprived at one fell swoop of a nice place in which to receive our guests or of a fresh chamber for use in the evening. It is a great thing to have entirely different surroundings then, and a pretty, well-aired and ventilated room in which to spend the fag end of a day. Circumstances must always govern cases, and there can be no set rules for the universal regulation of all lives, and if English people would only realise this fact, their sojourn here would be made far more interesting than it is at present. No one has ever taken the third room for the maids, therefore no one can ever do so. The door has always been in that position, therefore it must remain so. That room has always been draughty, therefore draughty it shall continue until the end of the chapter. These are the arguments used, if argument of any kind is allowed. As a rule the position is accepted unconditionally, and because an error has been made from the first, it is allowed to continue unchecked when a little forethought would circumvent that special mistake, and would make a room charming, habitable and warm, which hitherto has been nothing of the kind. Let me illustrate what I mean by an example. At a small house we possess in Watford there is the third room in question, which has been made into a very pretty library by the clever hand of Mr Arthur Smee, but which the first year we were in possession had never been used save as a home for books and a reception place for anyone who might come on business. No one had ever sat there, nor could I discover anyone who would; but I myself was then ‘on the shelf,’ and had never entered the room at all, being often absent from home, and always, whether there or elsewhere, confined to the circumscribed area of my own bed and sitting-rooms. I had asked questions about the room but could never get a satisfactory reply only the ever-repeated answer, ‘Oh, it looks all right, but just you try to sit there, that’s all, you’ll soon see why we can’t do anything of the kind.’ Now here is the room produced just as it was before I went into it, and I wonder if anyone can see the real mistake in the design? I own I could not perceive it from the picture. At first I asked if my people were ridiculous enough to fancy the room had a ghost. No not a ghost exactly; but in a tentative tone of voice something quite as uncanny and quite as intangible. Was it draughty? They didn’t think so; and yet it was impossible to warm it. In fact, it was quite out of the question that it could be sat in, and there it remained until one day [Illustration: LIBRARY AT WAYSIDE.]