In this room a screen by the door is often a most blessed possession, and as screens can be bought so cheaply nowadays everyone can avail herself of the comfort procured by a judicious use of them. Liberty first, and Shoolbred next, should be searched for an inexpensive screen, for sometimes Liberty has none, and then Shoolbred may come to the rescue, or our experience of both shops may be reversed; it all depends on which place has had the last consignment from Japan. I bought a beautiful screen at Liberty’s one year, about a month before Christmas, for 18s. 9d., but on applying for another in the following March, found all were sold out, and I had to go farther afield, discovering the one I wanted in a shop in High Street, Kensington, the name of which I have forgotten. True both Liberty and Shoolbred had plenty of screens but neither had an inexpensive one, with a back warranted to resist the frequent and uncalled-for assaults of the British housemaid. By the way, a screen should always be placed behind the door, which should in most cases open from left to right into a room if the room is in the least degree like the one illustrated. I am not fond of a door opening into a hall, and of course the perfect door should not open, but slide into the wall, but perfection is a word never heard, and certainly not understood at all in the usual suburb. If the room be blue, the _portière_ should be of printed velveteen in shades of yellow. With a floral paper it may be pink or green, but in any case a plain material should not be employed as a _portière_. One should always have a figured stuff there, and if one can afford it one cannot improve on the aforesaid velveteen. _Portières_ should be made up by a really competent hand and should be lined, and edged with either ‘grip-cord’ or fan-edging, as ball fringe is apt to come to grief in this situation, the _portière_ being often caught in the door, or as often grasped either by the parlour-maid as she announces a visitor or by any small child who may have to open or close the door. I may seem to speak unduly on the subject both of _portières_ and screens but unless they are employed freely, I can assure my readers they will never circumvent the ordinary suburban residence, but that if both are used, any house, even the most jerry-built one which ever disgraced a ‘Park,’ or blotted the erst-while fair appearance of a ‘Grove,’ can be made habitable. Without these aids to health, to say nothing of decoration, such a house would be an impossible home for anyone not born and bred in the Arctic regions; while outside blinds, if they can only be just nailed up _pro tem._, and be mere grass mats bought for a few shillings at Treloar’s, can circumvent extreme heat, which often is as bad to bear in these terrible houses as the excessive cold and draughts which characterise them. I know that as a rule three years sets the suburban tenant on the prowl, and, as I said before, the mere idea that such can