I think I have learnt the trick of them at last: and I don't suppose, all told, it has cost me more than fifty pounds.

And now I am trying to teach the rest of the family.

What I complain about the family is that they do not seem anxious to learn.
"You do it," they say, pressing the coal scoop into my hand: "it makes us nervous." It is a pretty, patriarchal idea: I stand between the trusting, admiring family and these explosive stoves that are the terror of their lives.
They gather round me in a group and watch me, the capable, all-knowing Head who fears no foreign stove.

But there are days when I get tired of going round making up fires.
Nor is it sufficient to understand only one particular stove.

The practical foreigner prides himself upon having various stoves, adapted to various work.