The next thing, therefore, was a cylinder of brass, broadly open above, saying to the world, as it were, “Look!  I contain coal.”  And there were brass tongs like sugar tongs wherewith Euphemia would regale the fire and brighten it up, handing it a lump at a time in the prettiest way.  But brass dints.  The brazen thing was quiet and respectable enough upstairs, but ever and again it went away to be filled.  What happened on these holiday jaunts Euphemia has never ascertained.  But a chance blow or worse cause ran a crease athwart the forehead of the thing, and below an almost imperceptible bulging hinted at a future corpulency.  And there was complaint of the quantity of polishing it needed, and an increasing difficulty in keeping it bright.  And except when it was full to the brim, the lining was unsightly; and this became more so.  One day Ithuriel must have visited Euphemia’s apartment, and the tarnished brilliancy of the thing stood confessed.  For some days there was an interregnum, and a coal-scuttle from downstairs—­a black unstable thing on flat foot and with a vast foolish nether lip—­did its duty with inelegant faithfulness.

Then Euphemia had a really pretty fancy.  She procured one of those big open garden baskets and painted it a pleasant brown, and instead of a garden fork she had a little half horticultural scoop.  In this basket she kept her coals, and she tied a pink ribbon on the handle.  One might fancy she had been in some dewy garden and had dug a few coals as one might dig up bulbs, and brought them in and put them down.  It attracted attention from all her visitors, and set a kind of fashion in the neighbourhood.  For a time Euphemia was almost contented.  But one day a malignant woman called, and looked at this device through her gilt eye-glasses, while she secretly groped in the dark of her mind for an unpleasant thing to say.  Then suddenly she remarked, “Why not put your coal in a bassinette?  Or keep it all on the floor?” Euphemia’s face fell.  The thing was undeniably very like a cradle, in the light of this suggestion; the coal certainly did seem a little out of place there; and besides, if there were more than three or four lumps they had a way of tumbling over the edge upon the carpet when the fire was replenished.  The tender shoot of Euphemia’s satisfaction suddenly withered and died.

So the struggle has gone on.  Sometimes it has been a wrought iron tripod with a subtle tendency to upset in certain directions; sometimes a coal-box; once even the noisy old coal-box of japanned tin, making more noise than a Salvation Army service, and strangely decorated with “art” enamels, had a turn.  At present Euphemia is enduring a walnut “casket,” that since its first week of office has displayed an increasing indisposition to shut.  But things cannot stay like this.  The worry and anxiety and vexation, Euphemia declares, are making her old before her time.  A delicate woman should not be left alone to struggle against brazen monsters.  A closed gas stove is happily impossible, but the husband of the household is threatened with one of those beastly sham fires, wherein gas jets flare among firebrick—­a mechanical fire without vitality or variety, that never dances nor crackles nor blazes, a monotonous horror, a fire you cannot poke.  That is what it will certainly come to if the problem remains unsolved.