Hitherto I have been speaking only of the stove supposed to be best suited to reception rooms and bedrooms.

The hall is provided with another sort of stove altogether: an iron stove this, that turns up its nose at coke and potato-peelings.

If you give it anything else but the best coal it explodes.

It is like living surrounded by peppery old colonels, trying to pass a peaceful winter among these passionate stoves.
There is a stove in the kitchen to be used only for roasting: this one will not look at anything else but wood.

Give it a bit of coal, meaning to be kind, and before you are out of the room it has exploded.
Then there is a trick stove specially popular in Belgium.