meals in the servants’ sitting-room or the kitchen, while the mother herself looked after the infant. But I fancy where this would be the case, decoration would not be a study, all the energies of the mistress being spent, and very properly too, on making both ends of the income meet if that be possible. At the same time, I can never see why a cottage need not be pretty and comfortable, and I hope that no one will be debarred from attempting to possess a pretty house because she is poor. Pretty things are nowadays as cheap, nay often cheaper, than ugly ones, and it only requires common-sense and the possession of a certain amount of taste to ensure that a house shall be both artistic and comfortable. Let us take first the unfortunate who really can only have one nursery, and who has to allow the child to sleep there at night with the nurse, for I always think it is unwise for the parents to have an infant in their bedroom even when it is very small. A man’s rest broken, means bad work during the day, while a woman is unfit for anything and certainly cannot do her work if she has had no sleep during the orthodox hours of repose. In this case the best room in the upper part of the house should be taken for the nursery; it should be as near the mother’s room as possible, and if there be a dressing-room attached, so much the better in every way, for out of that can be constructed the very necessary nursery pantry. Therein can be kept everything which is in any way unsightly, and it is possible that all signs of the nursery itself being used for a double purpose can be concealed, if one has at one’s service just an ordinary bedroom and dressing-room. We will therefore suppose that, in the first place, the suburban villa contains a bed and a dressing-room, and another bedroom and a bathroom on the same floor. In this case, I should propose that the so-called ‘best room,’ with the dressing-room, should be given over to the nurse and child, the master of the house having the bathroom entirely for his own use as dressing-room. If this arrangement is made, the bedroom which I trust may face south or south-east, can be treated entirely as a day-room, and be properly and prettily painted and papered. Under no circumstances should one of those fearsome ‘nursery’ papers be allowed, neither must a cheap and vulgar flower paper be [Illustration: COMBINED DAY AND NIGHT NURSERY.]