went out into the room. After the stove was jacketed, we were all much more comfortable. It gave a supply of fresh air which circulated all

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through the room instead of roasting some while others shivered."

"Is a furnace better than steam heat?" asked Ruth.

"Sometimes it is and sometimes not," replied Uncle George. "It all depends on the size of your house, where you live, and a good many other things. There are just three things to remember in heating and airing a house. The house must not be too hot, nor uncomfortably chilly. We'll buy a thermometer for the play-house and see that the rooms are kept between 60 and 68 degrees. Secondly, the air must keep moving-fresh air must keep coming in and the

used air must go out. And thirdly, the air must not get too dry. Furnaces usually have a place to hold water, so that the hot air may be moistened."

"Oh, yes," said Ruth. "Mother always keeps a pan of water on each radiator; don't you, Mother?" "Yes," smiled Mother, "and another and much prettier way to moisten the air is by having growing plants. The air sucks moisture from their leaves and from the moist carth.

"Goody!" exclaimed Ruth. "We'll have a lovely hot-house right in the play-room."

"All this talk about heat makes me feel like being moistened," said Father. "Paul, what do you say to our going in and making the folks a big pitcher of lemonade?"

THINGS TO DO

Find a small healthy plant outdoors or indoors. Arrange a paper around the bottom of the stem, covering the earth. Then place a tumbler over it, and note what forms in the glass. Also get a glassful of water and set another tumbler over the one full of water. Do these experiments show you how air may get moisture in it?

How is your home heated? If by a stove find out how the air about the stove is moving. You can do this by throwing tiny bits of soft feathers into the air. Try them around windows and doors, too. Can you make a drawing of the room, stove, windows and put in some little arrows to show where the feathers go?

If you have a furnace go look at it and try to make a picture of the inside and outside of it. How does the hot air get to the rooms? Test the air in the room with feathers, over the register, by windows and doors to see

how it is moving. Do you think furnaces are better or worse than stoves? Why?

Can you tell how the heat from your furnace is regulated?

THINGS TO REMEMBER

Heat is supplied in most modern American homes by grates, stoves, furnaces or steam pipes. Stoves and grates usually make one part of the room very hot, leaving the rest cold. Study the picture of a jacketed stove in this chapter and learn why such a stove makes the whole room warm. Notice that a furnace is like a large jacketed stove. The fresh air heated in the jacket of the furnace is distributed to the other and cooler parts of the house. This is because cold and heavier air coming into the jacket pushes the light warm air up and away.

However a house is heated, remember these points:

(1) There should be a good thermometer in the house. The temperature of the living room should not go below 60° F. nor above 68° F. Bedrooms may be colder. (2) The air in a room should be kept moving gently all the time.

(3) The air must be kept moist. This can be done by having plants in the room or basins of water on radiators and stoves.

TO THINK ABOUT

How does warm air behave, according to your tests? Cold air? How is the air around a hot stove moving?

How does the air move around a jacketed stove? Why does this kind of stove heat more of the room than a plain stove?

Draw a picture of a furnace to show how the hot air gets upstairs, if you can.

What has the temperature of your schoolroom been every day for the last week? Of your living room at

home? How near to the correct temperature are these temperatures you have observed? If the room feels too cold when the temperature is correct, what is the wise thing to do?

How can you be sure that the air in your room is in motion? How could you be sure the air in your room was being moistened?

What are three requirements of good heating?

CHAPTER VI

SOMETHING ABOUT DRAINS

"HOUSES are something like people, aren't they?" said Ruth.

"How are they?" queried Paul. Paul was not so fond of imagining things as Ruth and often called her fancies silly.

"Well," Ruth replied, "if a house is much good, it has to be strong and straight, and it needs air and sunshine. And it has to have water and light, just as we do and

"And it isn't good for it to have 'wet feet,'" put in Mother, looking up from her sewing. They were all three sitting under the cherry-tree near the playhouse, which really began to look like a house now, though Father said it was only just begun and that finishing a house was the hardest part of it. "Another thing about a house that is very much like a person," continued Mother, "is that, to keep clean, healthy and fit to live in, it needs lots of water, and that means that there must be a way of getting rid of the dirty water.'

"Out on Uncle Silas's farm," said Paul, "they used to just pitch the dish-water out onto the ground by the kitchen door."

"That is a very poor way," said Mother. "Of course, in the country, people haven't always what they would like, but any farmer can dig a drain to carry off the sewage from his house. When the cellar