KITCHEN AND BASEMENTS
If the conquest of the hall be difficult, the siege of the kitchen and
servants’ quarters generally is one that will carry dread even to the
stoutest heart. For as a rule the suburban builder sinks to his lowest
depths of villainy here, and either gives a damp and wandering basement
wherein no servant will remain more than her month, or a regular
cupboard where the stove leaves scarcely room for anything else, and
where the heat from that, and the draughts from the doors and windows,
are enough to ruin the constitution of any ordinary woman. The basement
kitchen is the worst of all, because it marks a class of house that has
seen better days, and is rapidly deteriorating. Therefore if one has to
choose between two houses, one of which has no basement, and another
which has, one should at once select the basementless one. There are
sure to be cellars below the house, which will keep it dry. One doesn’t
even in the suburbs _often_ come across a house, the boards of which are
pushed out of place by enterprising mushrooms growing in the soil
beneath, and ambitious of appearing in fresh air and among the haunts of
men.
If, however, the basement cannot be avoided, we must rise to the
occasion and do the very best we can in the matter. And first of all we
must see that it is really dry, and that its comfort is assured by the
presence of a dry area and the proper amount of ventilation, and absence
of damp. If this cannot be assured, the house must be given up. Far
better put up with a small dining-room and a dull drawing-room, for both
of these drawbacks can be easily remedied, but for a damp bad kitchen
there can be no cure, and should we weakly give in to it, we can never
be happy or comfortable in the least in our domestic arrangements, be
very sure of that.
If, however, we find that the basement is capable of amendment, our
first endeavours must be to make it as cheerful as possible, and to get
as much light and air into it as possible too. I have only once had to
‘wrastle’ with one on my own account, and that I made as bearable as
circumstances would permit, by enlarging a window and having one of
Chappius’ reflectors so arranged that as much sunshine came in as was
obtainable, while I had one of the three doors closed entirely, and made
an enormous scullery and washhouse species of abode, into a nice little
scullery and a rather decent room in which the maids could sit and have
their meals and do their needlework. Oh, I do hope some day to hear of a
real and _bona-fide_ revolt against the regulation suburban
accommodation for the unfortunate maids, for, until this takes place, I
am quite sure the servant question will remain a very burning one.
I am writing now more especially for those householders who have from
£500 to £1000 a year to spend, and who have two or four maids, according
to their means and the size of their families, and who ought to be able
to find the kitchen arrangements comprised in a square block, consisting
of kitchen, scullery, parlour-maid’s pantry, with good, deep cupboards
for glass and china, and a pretty little sitting-room where the
domestics could have a few at least of the amenities of life. The
bedrooms could be above, as could the sanitary arrangements, which are
all too often placed either in the cellar part of the house or close to
the larder, or, in fact, anywhere where they ought not to be. Now
suppose we find the ordinary box of a pantry, slip of a kitchen and
scullery and larder, how should we best circumvent this arrangement, I
wonder? Well, first we can tackle the landlord, who, if he have money at
all: and an impecunious landlord is a deadly and desperate thing to
possess, and should be most carefully avoided: will be glad to do as we
want for an extra rent at the rate of 5 per cent on whatever outlay he
can make. We should get him to build out a servant’s sitting-room, and
enlarge the pantry and scullery, and to put above the erection a
servant’s bath and lavatory arrangement. This could be done for about
£100 and the extra £5 on the rent would hardly be felt, while the
comfort obtained thereby would far and away compensate for the outlay.
If the landlord be obdurate, the only thing to do is to buy for
ourselves one of Humphreys’ moveable iron buildings, and have it adapted
for our purposes. In this case we can only, I fear, manage the servants’
sitting-room and extra accommodation for glass, china and washing-up,
and we shall have to put the room door just apart from the house,
though, of course, a very short passage could be erected. But before
anything is done, care should be taken to ascertain the rules and
regulations respecting the erecting of buildings in the special
locality, as all seem to me to differ; and, indeed, in some there are
none at all. Yet, in any case this is a thing to be ascertained
definitely, for I have known a Local Board step in and formally order
the removal of a beautiful and pet conservatory, because the builder had
innocently infringed some bye-law in its construction, and had not
obtained the sanction of the authorities to the plans of the structure
before erection was commenced. If neither the landlord nor Humphreys can
come to the rescue, I am going to advocate a step which will be nothing
short of anarchy and revolution in the eyes of any old-fashioned
person, for I am about to suggest that, in these desperate straits, the
usual third room should be handed over to the maids to sit in, while we
can keep it in a measure in our own hands too, by erecting our
store-cupboards there, and extra shelves for glass and china. But if we
do, we must not be always pouncing in and out on the maids, but must
give out everything for the day’s use before ten o’clock, after which we
should never go there unless actually obliged, for nothing is so
detestable as a room into which anyone can go at any moment, and where
the maids can never feel they are safe from eternal supervision. If the
door of this third room opens straight on the hall, and if another can
be made to open into the kitchen premises--and this is often the
case--it would be well to permanently close the first and have the
second made. The original door need be only bolted or locked inside, and
covered with a curtain, while it is not either difficult or expensive to
contrive another exit, for a hole is easily knocked in an ordinary
suburban wall, and a door frame and door added. And I venture to
prophesy if this is done, that there will be a reign of peace in the
kitchen department unprecedented in the annals of most houses, because
servants will usually stay where they are comfortable, and where they
feel they are considered, and their health and happiness are both
thought about. I know quite well that in their own homes and in the
houses they come from, they have no real privacy at all; but I also know
that most maids leave such homes at too early an age to recollect half,
or, indeed, to realise half, of the miseries they are called upon to
bear there, and they very easily forget the past, and only really
comprehend the present and its possibilities; besides which, a maid goes
away from her home to ‘better herself.’ Were she content with
semi-starvation and over-crowding, she would remain there, or enter on
the desperate existence of a factory hand or a home worker. The fact
that she wishes for more comfort, for more human surroundings, sends her
into domestic service; and if that comfort and those surroundings were
forthcoming, servants would be far more plentiful than they are at
present, and would likewise come of a far better and much more
honourable and pleasant class. The first step then is, undoubtedly, to
secure something in the shape of ‘the room,’ as the servants’ hall is
called in more ambitious households, and the second is to see that it is
decently arranged and is sacred to the maids for a certain portion of
the day, and most certainly for all the evening. I say a certain portion
of the day, because, in small establishments, it is possible that the
mistress may have little jobs of finer cooking, of plate-cleaning, or
even dressmaking to do that she cannot well manage in the one
sitting-room which would be her portion when the third room is given up
to the maids. If this be the case, the establishment will naturally be
so small that the maids will be too much occupied all the mornings to be
able to use it, so that until 12.30 it could remain in the mistress’s
possession; but after that hour she must never enter it. Just as in a
larger house and with more maids, the hour of ten must see her out of
the kitchen, that part of her work being completed then for the rest of
the day.
Almost the first things a housemistress should ascertain about her house
are the position and number of the pipes which are part and parcel of
the water supply, as, unless this is ascertained, and she is able to
possess herself of a species of sketch-map of them, she will not be able
to know how to manage should the usual winter arrive in all its
strength, and the water become frozen in the pipes in a manner that
should never, for one moment even, be allowed. As a rule, our winters
are not very long or very severe; if they were we should, no doubt, be
readier for them than we are now. But we can always depend on a cold
‘snap’ or period during which our very unpreparedness lays us open to a
thousand and one discomforts and dangers, none of which need have been
ours if we had had the common sense to recollect that we should have
looked out for and prepared against a state of things that is as
inevitable as it is undoubtedly most detestable and disagreeable. The
suburban builder, as a rule, has his ideas, and his only, on the subject
of pipe laying. One idea is, so to imbed them in the walls of the house
that we cannot get at them at all, and another is to place them outside
the house in the most exposed position possible, where they are
warranted to freeze on the first provocation, unless we can take the
matter into our own hands at once, and either box them in, filling in
the space between the pipes and the boxes with sawdust, which generally
protects them for all time from the severest frost; or, at the approach
of winter, so swathe them in flannel rags and hay bands, that frost
cannot touch them, not forgetting to treat in a similar manner the pipes
in the tank room. These should be our especial care, for they are often
the first to freeze, and are the cause of many and many a detestable and
untoward catastrophe.
The boiler in the suburban kitchen is generally one of two kinds, and is
either of the low-pressure order, which has no system of circulating
pipes, or the high-pressure species, which has and which requires more
elaborate care than the former. If the low-pressure boiler is the one in
use, and the frost is severe, it is better to completely empty all the
pipes in the house, and to cut off the water supply to the house
entirely, drawing the water from a supply-cock fixed just before the
water enters the house, whence it can be obtained by hand as required.
Of course this adds a great deal to the work, but it means safety, for
when the boiler is kept well filled it cannot burst, neither can pipes
freeze if there be no water in them to bring about this very
disagreeable state of things. A low-pressure boiler having a lid that
comes off, can always be hand-filled easily, while cans of water must be
placed wherever one is accustomed to use water freely; and though baths
may be curtailed and work increased, no damage or danger can ensue.
Therefore the moment a frost sets in, cut off the water from the house,
and rely entirely on the hand-filling of the boiler for all domestic
purposes.
If the boiler is a high-pressure one, we must be very vigilant from the
first moment a frost appears, while we must be ready for it long before
it really arrives. The first thing to see is that this boiler is
supplied with a safety-valve and a supply-cock; and the second thing to
do is to have the principles on which the safety-valve is constructed
so explained to us by the man who supplies it, that we shall always be
able to ascertain in a moment if it is in working order, or if it is
not. For safety-valves are possessed of a demon habit of being out of
order when they are least expected to be, and we may be priding
ourselves on the fact that we have one, and are therefore quite safe,
when the wretched thing may be refusing to work, and we may be on the
very brink of the catastrophe we have intended it to avoid for us.
Safety-valves differ so very much that it would be impossible to
describe here how a house-mistress can ascertain if her own special
valve is all right or all wrong. The only thing she can do is to have
written instructions from the man who supplies it. These instructions,
the plan of the pipes and special rules about what to do in a severe
frost, should be in a small book kept among the housekeeping books, and
easily get-at-able in case the frost should occur when the mistress was
away from home, or if she were ill or in any way unable to attend to it
herself. If the supply pipes cannot be got at and protected from the
frost as a whole, it is best, once the tanks in the roof are full, to
cut off the supply entirely from the main. In this case the local
authorities must be communicated with, and the tanks filled by the Local
Board by means of a stand-pipe, and great care must be taken both to see
the tanks are kept full, and that the pipe between the hot and cold
water tanks is kept free from frost. If by any chance the worst comes to
the worst, and danger is ahead, the safety-valve will show it by blowing
off steam; then out with your fire at once, dear reader; you are done
for, and must remain kitchen-fireless until a beneficent thaw sets in.
In the meantime a second stove in the scullery will prevent you from
being foodless, and though hot water may be scarce and comfort little,
you will at anyrate be safe, and as the maids have their little
sitting-room they won’t be frozen in the kitchen or thawed in the
scullery, as they most undoubtedly would otherwise have been. Of course,
if we have our pipes properly protected, and there is no warning from
the safety-valve, and water flows freely from the boiler-taps, we are
all right. In this case it is best never to allow the kitchen fire to go
out, but last thing at night to bank it up with ashes and briquettes,
and so ensure its burning without stopping. Of course it should be
protected by a guard, and no kindling wood must on any account be placed
to dry either in the ovens or on the hot plates by the side. In the
morning the fire should be thoroughly raked out, and set going again in
the usual way. Unless this is done, the fire will not be good enough for
cooking: it will be a caked mass, which will not ensure the cook’s
manufactures being the success they should be; therefore, in giving our
instructions, great stress should be laid on the real necessity that
undoubtedly exists for a rebuilding and relighting of the fire for the
new day.
Sometimes there are odd lengths of pipes that we cannot protect, and
which only supply certain single taps. In this case stop-cocks should be
fixed in them in such a way as to prevent the water entering them, and
these should be used in the frost. Then these special pipes can be kept
waterless without disturbing the whole internal economy of the house as
regards the water supply. Of course I am not writing in any measure
about the proper arrangements of the water pipes. I am only advising the
ordinary suburban residents how to save misfortune, and a ruinous
plumbers’, and very likely a decorators’, bill too, should the winter be
as one usually finds it in England, where the spells of
frost--undoubtedly short as they are--undoubtedly make people
indifferent and happy-go-lucky about their preparations for hard
weather.
But given the unexpected in the shape of real cold, and what occurs?
Boilers burst and kill and maim people freely, and the moment a thaw
comes, the plumbers are besieged by those whose pipes are pouring
torrents of water down the walls and the front staircase, while carpets
and furniture are spoiled, and everyone’s health suffers because the
smallest precautions have not been taken to ensure the house against an
entirely preventible state of things. Then there is one great thing to
recollect, and that is, that after a frost one must flush most lavishly
all the drains and sinks, and, moreover, during the frost we must keep
ample disinfectants ready and in use in every place where they can
possibly be needed. I always put Sanitas down the bath and the
housemaid’s sink too, because soapy water decays and causes very
unpleasant smells, while, of course, Sanitas should be liberally poured
down every other place in use. Then when the thaw comes, let the water
run freely for at least an hour a day for the first three days down each
drain, flushing first with hot water and a liberal supply of
disinfectants; for if these precautions are taken, we shall not want the
doctor, a gentleman whose visits too often follow a thaw with a
regularity far more pleasing to him, maybe, than they can be to us, even
if we are as fond of him as people usually manage to become of the
family doctor.
I may seem to have dwelt unduly on the great pipe question, but the long
frost of the early part of 1895 showed me most emphatically that there
was great need to instruct the ordinary householder in the suburbs and
in small town houses about this unpoetical but most necessary subject.
No less than three boilers burst in one week in the place where I was
then staying; one resulted in the death of the servant and total
blindness for the only child of the house; one in the death of three
children, while the third maimed the cook for life. Of the destruction
to property I need say nothing; but when we reflect that all these
accidents were absolutely preventable, and were entirely due to crass
ignorance on the part of both mistresses and maids, we will, I think,
come to the conclusion that the first duty of woman is to know her
pipes, the position thereof, and the manner of her water supply; while
the second is to be ready to act for the best the moment frost appears,
and so render bursting boilers and pipes the impossibilities they both
can be made in the most faultily-constructed suburban residences, if
only the dwellers therein have their heads screwed on the right way, and
are prepared for any real emergency. In any case, it is well always to
have some means of cooking, which shall be available should we be, for
one cause or the other, unable to use the range, which, by the way,
should, if we can in any way afford it, be the ‘Eagle,’ for at present,
at all events, no better one has been invented. If possible, there
should be a small open grate and the little side low-pressure boiler
which can always be hand-filled; in the scullery or even in the maid’s
sitting-room; but if either is impossible, we must be possessed of means
of cooking by gas, so that we shall not be left entirely helpless should
the frost seize on our pipes before we are ready, or should it be
necessary to sweep the kitchen chimney or repair the kitchen range.
If, however, we have a gas stove, the supply of gas should not be left
to the discretion of the maids, but should only be get-at-able when it
is legitimate to use it. Unless the mistress herself can turn on and off
the gas, and keep it off when it should not be used, the waste and
expense will be enormous. There are certain things ‘the very best’ maids
are always reckless with, _e.g._, gas, potatoes, bread; and kindling
wood and matches; small items to fuss about, no doubt, but small things
are what add up and become terrors. One expects the big ones somehow,
but the tiny odds and ends, that seem nothing separately, are what swell
the weekly bills when they are added up, and therefore should be more
thought about than they are in the usual suburban household.
The pipes and the kitchen itself once settled about, the next steps to
take are towards proper ventilation and draught exclusion. One cannot
ventilate with a draught, yet how few people realise this; if they did,
colds would go quite out of fashion and everyone would be much happier
than at the present moment. As a rule one door in the orthodox kitchen
opens straight on the open air, and here the tradespeople come and
linger while waiting about for the orders which should never be called
for except under special stress of circumstances. If this be the case,
what would it cost to add a simple porch and side-door? not much above
£20, yet what a difference would it make in the comfort of the kitchen.
If, however, this outlay is impossible, a large, oil-cloth-covered
screen should be placed round the door in such a way that one side of it
is put by the side of the door which opens, and the door is reached from
the other side of the screen, which is only pushed on one side to answer
the bell, and replaced as soon as possible. This breaks the draught even
if it can’t exclude it, while the maids’ health and the consumption of
coals both considerably benefit by such an arrangement. More Slater’s
patent draught-excluder should be put round doors and all windows, and
ventilation should be secured by a round ventilator put in the top part
of the window, and another in the top part of an outer wall; these
ventilators can always be closed, but when cooking is in progress or gas
is burning, and for at least an hour after the meals are cooked, they
should remain open and so ensure that the air in the kitchen should be
always pure and fresh.
The larder should be ventilated in the same way, and any windows should
be covered with very fine wire-netting on the side they do not
open--outside, if they are the ordinary small sash windows, inside,
should they push outwards on an iron support--to prevent cats, dogs and
small animals of any kind from entering, while great care should be
taken to see that the larder is damp-proof. Nothing keeps in a damp
larder, and, therefore if it should be damp it is utterly useless to try
and put meat, bread and butter there. In any case if one has not tiles,
and I never yet met with the suburban larder that had, the walls should
be painted from top to bottom, first with Chambers’s damp-resisting
fluid, and then with a couple of coats of Aspinall’s enamel paint in a
shade of ivory white. No one should permit the decorator to talk him or
her out of using this most invaluable preparation, for nothing I can
assure my readers, can take its place. I have had eight years’ constant
experience of it. I have had many years’ experience of the ordinary
paint, and I confidently say that it and Aspinall are not to be
mentioned together in any shape or form, therefore everyone should
insist on its use. The decorator I fancy does not get quite as much
profit on it as on the ordinary paint, and it is more trouble to apply I
know, and these perhaps are his reasons for his undoubted dislike to it;
but if my readers are wise, they will insist on Aspinall, especially
where damp has to be considered, and where a good surface and uniform
colouring are in request.
The larder should have one wide shelf, and in one corner should be a
safe for meat, and poultry, with very fine wire-netting all round. This
should be able to be moved and hung out in a shady corner in the garden
in the summer if the larder should be warm at all, or else hung in the
cellar if there be no garden. Here too should be placed the
refrigerator, without which no house is complete, and which soon saves
its own cost, in the manner it allows one to keep one’s provisions
sweet, and one’s milk right, and one’s butter from running away, as it
otherwise does at the smallest amount of heat. The larder floor should
be tiled, if not it must be ‘gone over’ every day with a mop dipped in
Sanitas and water to take up the dust and make it fresh and clean; then
the food should be nicely arranged for the mistress’s visit of
inspection, while once a week the larder must be thoroughly scrubbed
out, shelf and all, the shelf being washed over with a damp duster
daily, when the floor is done over with the ever-useful mop. The same
treatment should be given to the scullery, where the sinks should be
flushed daily, and which should never be without their big lump of soda
in one corner to prevent the grease accumulating.
The kitchen floor should be simply boarded; if only used to cook in, it
should have merely one or two large squares of oilcloth or cocoa-nut
matting by the stove, kitchen table, or where the cook and kitchen-maid
stand to work, and the furniture should resolve itself into a couple of
good tables, one the ordinary kitchen table, the other much on the same
lines but smaller, and placed close to the window, to be used for pastry
making and the finer parts of cooking, and which should both be scrubbed
daily, and on which grease should never be allowed to remain for one
minute. A couple of ordinary kitchen chairs and the dresser should
complete the plenishing. The dresser drawers should be inspected once a
week, to see there are no accumulations of rubbish there, and that all
is in order. The dresser must never be used as private property by the
maids, else will it become a species of glory hole, filled to the brim
with unmended stockings, old dusters, paper and string, and odds and
ends, which ought not to be tolerated there, or, indeed anywhere else
for five minutes by anyone. If the furniture is as severely simple as I
have described above, the kitchen resolves itself into what it should
undoubtedly be, merely a place to cook in, and in which to prepare the
meals. In this case the walls should be painted from ceiling to floor
with a shade of electric turquoise enamel, or else in one shade of the
blue to about 4 feet from the floor, the rest of the wall being painted
a soft shade of brown. This should include the doors and window-sashes,
and the one paint should be divided from the other by a wide band of
brown stenciling on the blue surface of the wall. The ceiling should be
whitewashed, as should be the ceilings in all kitchen premises, and the
kitchen should be lighted with a good centre gaslight with a couple of
burners. A bracket arm for gas should be on one side of the fire, to use
while cooking was going on on very dark days, or when special cooking
was going forward; and there should be one gas light in the larder.
These lights should be protected with the proper wire-globes sold by
most ironmongers. Gas globes are soon smashed in the kitchen, and they
are not really safe when they are on moveable brackets or pendants, as
they all too often are in these parts of a house.
The pantry should be treated in the same way as the kitchen as regards
decoration, and should only have mats on the floor, and no fixed
covering there at all. Only the china, glass and silver in use should be
kept in this room, the latter, if valuable, only in the day time, and
even then in a small locked safe. If the pantry should be large, the
extra glass and china can be kept there in locked cupboards, accessible
to none but the mistress. Here in the ordinary ship’s cabin provided by
the suburban builder, the ‘fitment’ style of cupboard is most useful. As
a rule the maid only wants room enough to stand or sit by her sink to
wash up and clean the daily silver, and so the tiny space can be almost
filled with cupboards; and here is an excellent place for the stores and
jam-closet: the ordinary suburban resident if wise, getting in her
stores once a week from Shoolbred, and not dealing with the local
grocer, who, all too often extracts orders from the maids when none
should be forthcoming. If there really is no room here for them,
cupboards must be erected in the maid’s room, whether it be that vexed
third room or another. Somewhere there must be a store-cupboard,
properly regulated and properly looked after by the mistress herself,
and no one else at all; otherwise, that way most undoubtedly lie
bankruptcy and disorganisation, often enough one and the same thing.
The maids’ sitting-room should be papered with some pretty, light paper,
and should have either a dado of cupboards and shelves in the fitment
style, or else a real dado of plain, self-coloured oilcloth, which can
be wiped over with a damp duster daily. This and the paint could once
more be brown, as could the dado-rail. The ceiling must be whitewashed.
There should be a nice table for meals and work, six ordinary Windsor
chairs, and a couple of comfortable basket chairs, with hard-wearing,
tapestry-covered cushions. These should be considered the property of
the elder servants, if four are kept; but, of course, if the housemaid
is of ‘staid’ age, and careful she could have a nice chair too. I think
the ordinary kitchen chair a cruel thing, except for use at meals, and
see no reason why the maids should be condemned to its use and nothing
else, when, surely their backs must ache sometimes as well as the backs
of other far less employed women undoubtedly do.
The grate must be a slow-combustion one, and, unless the mistress uses
the room need not be lighted, save in very severe weather, before one
o’clock, when it should be lighted from the top and allowed to burn
slowly down, and kept going with briquettes and small coal judiciously
mingled with a little larger coal. The curtains should be of the dark
blue and white butterfly cretonne Liberty sells, and which should be in
universal use wherever much washing is to be expected, for it washes
splendidly, and never seems to wear out. I have still a couple of
cretonne covers I had quite thirteen years ago. The floors should either
be stained or else covered with plain cork carpet, supplemented with
small rugs here and there, or else with a square of cocoa-nut matting.
But I like rugs best; they are so easily taken up and shaken, and dust
is kept at bay as long as this is done. I am very much inclined to say,
do not have gas here, yet I fear unless we have plenty of help we must,
or the lamps, inevitable in the sitting-room, will become too numerous
for our staff. At the same time, I do very strongly recommend a good
duplex lamp from the centre of the ceiling if it can be managed.
Servants are reckless of gas. They are not so fond of lighting the lamps
as they are of setting a light to the gas. In the first place, it is
more trouble; in the second, they know that if they light them too soon
they will have to re-trim and re-fill them before the evening is out.
But if a lamp is procured, it must be a good one. It must have a metal
receiver, and it must have a clear glass shade. Silk or stuff shades are
out of place, and very dark always I think; in such a room as this they
would be ridiculous, and most likely dangerous. This room is in the care
of the kitchen-maid too, though, if there are books, pictures and
ornaments, as there should be, the housemaid should take a pride in
dusting them and keeping them in order, and should see that the rougher
parts of the cleaning are properly performed. As the mistress will use
this room for a short while in any case, she can always see that ruin
has not begun among the furniture and decorations; for whether it is
provided by the builder, or whether she supplement the accommodation of
the house herself as advised before, she should always have one
store-cupboard here, whence she could give out the things for the day’s
use. She can then supervise without spying; for once tacitly allow that
a room in one’s own house cannot be entered save on sufferance (mind, I
don’t say frequented!) it is easier to storm an enemy’s citadel
successfully than gain an entry into that special chamber without more
friction than anyone who has not tried a similar situation could well
believe.
One word more. In frosty weather gas and fires should not be stinted.
The gas should be burned steadily in the scullery, pantry and
lavatories, to prevent any chance of the water therein freezing. This
may save a great deal; but, of course, if the pipes have frozen, one can
only accept the situation and wait for a thaw. But that they need never
do this, I trust I have demonstrated in a manner that should be patent
to the least imaginative housewife in the world.