inhabitants of the house. If the children have pets the dogs and cats must be washed with carbolic soap and water, and sent away at once, and the canaries must be removed downstairs. I do not think anyone realises how easily cats and dogs can spread complaints, else I should not have heard my nurse exclaim, ‘Oh! I should never have thought of sending away the dogs.’ Neither, by the same token, would the doctor, although both our dogs were in the habit of reposing on the beds, and one at least had extremely long hair. To sum up briefly the necessities of a healthy nursery, I should say that they include two easily-isolated rooms, plenty of sun and air as opposed to heat and draughts, and above all, spotless cleanliness and well-made, simply-designed furniture, which can be easily moved, which allows of no accumulations, and which finally can be kept by the nurse herself in a state of perfect dustlessness without an undue amount of labour. Under these circumstances even a suburban house can be made to do its duty and to provide the proper accommodation for our future citizens the children of the home. CHAPTER VIII BEDROOMS In the rooms set aside for the purposes of rest and sleep, I venture to remark that the ordinary builder, to say nothing of the ordinary decorator, rises to his very worst heights of villainy, and makes the task before us one of almost superhuman effort. I have had three of these houses to live in, and in all of them, when the doors did not face the only possible place to put the bed, they came exactly at the side of the fire, and left no space whatever to put a sofa, let alone a comfortable armchair should one be ill and have to remain in one’s room longer than the hours which are set apart for repose. And as illness is always possible, and moreover more than possible is it vain to ask when further ‘eligible sites’ are cut up for building, that the landlords of the future will kindly keep an eye on the [Illustration: BEDROOM.] plans and ensure the houses being built in such a way that it is possible to live in them without an undue expenditure of money or resources? How I should love to design just for once the small ideal house with its square hall, capable of being used as an extra sitting-room or a billiard-room, we need not then have the ‘three reception-rooms’ which sound so grand and mean so little. Upstairs should be three good bedrooms and a dressing-room, bath and day nursery; the servants’ rooms and box-room in their turn above these, and whenever possible, reached by a separate staircase. I see no reason why such a house with reasonable and rational servants’ downstairs accommodation, as already described, should be out of the reach of the usual suburban resident with his £800 to £1000 a year.