The front room is quite light and cheerful, with a good view of the street. The back room is rather dark, and has a narrow area facing into a strip of garden. The house contains but five bedrooms, so that the basement cannot well be spared. Here I would use the front room (made very light and gay with paper and paint) as a combination servants' sitting-room, pantry, and store-room. The kitchen should be tiled if feasible--if not, papered with a white-tiled paper--and floored with black-and-white linoleum in order to make it as light as possible. The back area must be enlarged so as to give more light and air, and some steps should lead into the garden, where the maids can sit in hot weather. At present the basement consists of a front room and kitchen, coal cellars under the pavement, a lavatory, and a little piece at the end of the passage leading to the back area, which can be arranged for a knife- and boot-cleaning place. But there is no larder. This must be built. A door is cut to lead out of the kitchen into a tiny lobby, out of this lobby one door opens into the white-tiled, well-ventilated larder, and the other into the area. The basement is now as light and airy as any basement can be. There is no scullery, but that apartment is unnecessary in most houses and certainly unnecessary in a small house where two, or at most three, servants are employed, and which contains a pleasant room in which they can sit and have their meals. The kitchen should be fitted with a gas or electric cooker and a gas or coke hot-water furnace. The front room is warmed by a gas stove, and in order to make up for the extra work entailed by the basement, a service lift is installed, with double hatches opening from kitchen and pantry, and from dining-room and smoking-room, which are directly over the kitchen and pantry. This house is completed by a ground floor cloakroom and two bathrooms, gas fires everywhere but in the drawing-room, telephone bells, and in each room a tiny gas ring, so that in case of illness or other emergency hot water or hot food can be obtained without troubling the maids. With all these labour-saving arrangements two servants are able to do the work with ease, and to do it in such a way as is required by English gentlepeople, who entertain more than do their compeers in continental countries. When planning and furnishing a house, say to yourself over and over again, "Some one will have to keep this clean." [Illustration: _PLATE XVI_ THE ILLUSTRATION SHOWS A "POTTERTON" COOKER TAKEN TO PIECES FOR THE REGULAR CLEANING GIVEN BY ALL CAREFUL COOKS. The fitments of all modern gas cookers are readily removable, and easily cleaned.] III But in addition to structural labour-saving arrangements, these rearranged houses are furnished in a labour-saving manner. Except in the drawing-room, there is as little furniture as possible, for crowded rooms are difficult to clean and take a long time to keep in order.