“What if you had none?”

“If I had none, my kitchen, dining-room, store-room, china-closet, butler’s pantry and all the blessed facilities for cooking, serving and removing the meals should be within a radius of ten feet.  How any mortal woman with a soul above dress trimmings can be content to spend three hours in preparing meals to be eaten in thirty minutes passes my comprehension.  When I ‘do my own work,’ as Aunt Jerusha says, there will be no extra steps, no extra dishes, no French cooking, no multiplying of ‘courses.’”

“No cards, no cake, no style.”

“Yes, indeed!  The most distinguished and elegant style.  Such style as is not possible except where all the household service is performed by the most devoted, the most thoughtful, the most intelligent, if I may say so—­”

“Certainly the most intelligent, amiable, accomplished and altogether lovely member of the family.  I agree to that.”

“There will be no pretense of style—­if that is what you mean, no vain endeavor to conceal poverty or ignorance, but a delightful Arcadian candor and simplicity that will leave the mistress of the house, who is also housekeeper, nurse, cook, dairymaid, butler, waitress, laundress, seamstress, governess and family physician, abundant time and strength for such other occupations and amusements as may be most congenial.  It would be a delightful way of living, and I should not hesitate to try it if I felt certain that I had a soul above dress trimmings.  I am not willing to be a household drudge, overwhelmed by the ‘work that is never done;’ therefore, to be on the safe side, we will keep two servants.

“The cooking range, whether of the portable or ‘set’ kind, will have a brick wall behind it and at each side, which, carried above, will form a sort of canopy to conduct into the chimney the superfluous heat in warm weather and the steam and smoke from cooking at all times.  I suppose some housekeepers would object to separating the two pantries, but they have no common interests requiring close proximity.  The kitchen pantry is a store-room and a kind of private laboratory, where the mysterious experiments are made that develop our taste for esthetic cooking and give us an experimental knowledge of dyspepsia.  Its operations precede the work of the range to which it is a near neighbor, as it ought to be.  It has also the merit of being in the cool northwest corner of the house, with small windows on two adjacent sides, which are better than a single window, for the air of a store-room or pantry cannot be changed too freely in warm weather.

“Do you see the closets at the end of this pantry?  One is for ice, which is shoved in through a little door just above the sink where it is brought by the ice-man; the other is for a cold closet and is built in such a way as to get the full benefit of its cold-blooded neighbor.  Don’t forget, in making the plan, that the door through which the ice slides must be large enough to take in the largest cakes, and must be so arranged that after being washed at the sink they will slide easily without lifting or banging into their proper places inside.”