"I call this house suburban because it is within 'daily bread' distance of London and therefore the neighbourhood is much built over. This enables us to have electric light and a telephone, and the London stores deliver three times a week. I was told that servants were simply appalling, so bad and so hard to find. So I thought we had better be as independent of them as possible. We had taken a small house and were rearranging it, so I decided to have a coke furnace for hot water and radiators and little electric fires in the drawing-room and smoking-rooms, for cold weather and for the cheering effect a fire gives. The gardener undertakes the furnace and stokes at seven, at midday, and when he leaves at night. The house is beautifully warm, and we have no trouble with radiators or hot water. I have no scullery, but cook by electricity, and have a sink in the kitchen, where there is an alcove with a table and armchairs for the maids, and they have their own little piece of garden to sit in. There is a pantry, and the house-parlourmaid can sit there if she wishes. There is a buttery hatch into the dining-room, and the cook has only to hand the dishes through it. I keep an oil stove in readiness should the electric cooker go wrong, but so far it has not. The cook's work is greatly lessened when cooking by electricity. We have three bathrooms and no washhandstand bedroom work. The house has polished wood floors, and rugs and linoleum. It is simply but well furnished, and I have glass over the mahogany toilet tables, sideboard, and side tables. Very little metal work, and the doors and woodwork are unpainted. This saves much labour. We have a polished dinner-table and save the cost of buying and washing tablecloths, side and toilet cloths. Unfortunately, I had knives of the old-fashioned kind, but use a knife machine, and long-handled mops, Bissel sweeper, etc. In normal times we entertained a good deal, and then had a woman to help wash up; but now, of course, there is practically no entertaining. "I hate linoleum. I like nice, bright coal fires. I abhor sparsely furnished rooms. I think your ideas are detestable!!" I knew you would say that. Most people are antagonistic to the ideas of other people until they have had time to become used to them and regard them as their own. Still, the title of this book is not "The House of My Dreams," or "A Castle in Spain," but "The Labour-Saving House." [Illustration: _PLATE XXVI_ METER READING In order to check expenditure on gas and to detect wastage, leakage, or faulty registration, the gas-meter ought to be read regularly, say once a week, and a record kept of the amount of gas consumed. Meter reading is quite simple, and it should be no more difficult for an educated woman to learn to read her own gas-meter than a reasonably intelligent child to learn to tell the time by the clock.