defect to be an architectural sin which
even her aunt's broad charity would fail to cover.

"Oh, Jill! where have you laid your conscience? I can't stay to hear my
house abused. Please show Aunt Jerusha the pantry and the china-closet
and I will flee to the office."

"Why, yes, to be sure you have a very nice buttery and china-cupboard."

"I meant good, generous closets for the chambers. Of course there's a
pantry, but I don't think the arrangement of shelves, drawers and
cupboards is very convenient."

"It seems very liberal."

"Yes, but would you advise me to have the pantry in the new house like
it?"

"Well, no, dear; since you asked me, I wouldn't. It is possible to have
too many conveniences even in a pantry. It is a good plan to have a few
cupboards to keep some things from the dust and others from the light,
but most of our raw materials now-a-days come in tight boxes or cans,
and I find them more handy standing on the shelves than shut up in
drawers. I don't suppose it would be so in your case, dear, but a
drawer sometimes hides very slovenly habits. It is so easy to drop an
untidy thing into a drawer and shove it out of sight. These large
wooden boxes, all built in with their covers and handles, look nice and
handy, but it's hard to clean them out. I would rather have good wide
shelves and light movable tin boxes like those used in the groceries.
You could buy them, I suppose, but I had mine made at the tin-shop to
fit the shelves. I can take them out and wash them any time, and they
never get musty, as wooden boxes will, even with the best of care. But
you mustn't be biased by my old-fashioned notions."

"I think they are very good notions if they are old-fashioned. If we
have cupboards inside the pantry, drawers inside the cupboards, and
boxes and cases inside the drawers, finding the spices is like opening
a nest of. Chinese puzzles. A mechanic would never hide the tools in
his workshop in that way."

"How do you reach the upper shelves?"

"I never reach them, and all that room is wasted. It is worse than
wasted. It is a reservoir for dust and cobwebs."

"Wouldn't it be well, dear, if all the upper part was made into
cupboards for things seldom used?"

"Indeed it would. I think I will have the new pantry made something
like this: low cupboards next to the floor, for things that; need to be
shut up and yet must be handy; on the top of these, which will be not
quite three feet high, a very wide