not telephoned:

"Hello, Ethel? This is Alice. Will you and Arthur come on the
sixteenth for over Sunday?"

"The sixteenth? That's Friday. We'd love to!"

"Will you take the 3:20 train? etc."

[Illustration: "A GEM OF A HOUSE MAY BE NO SIZE AT ALL, BUT ITS LINES
ARE HONEST, AND ITS PAINTING AND WINDOW CURTAINS IN GOOD TASTE ... AND ITS
BELL IS ANSWERED PROMPTLY BY A TRIM MAID WITH A LOW VOICE AND QUIET,
COURTEOUS MANNER." [Page 131.]]

CHAPTER XII

THE WELL-APPOINTED HOUSE

Every house has an outward appearance to be made as presentable as
possible, an interior continually to be set in order, and incessantly to
be cleaned. And for those that dwell within it there are meals to be
prepared and served; linen to be laundered and mended; personal garments
to be brushed and pressed; and perhaps children to be cared for. There is
also a door-bell to be answered in which manners as well as appearance
come into play.

Beyond these fundamental necessities, luxuries can be added indefinitely,
such as splendor of architecture, of gardening, and of furnishing, with
every refinement of service that executive ability can produce. With all
this genuine splendor possible only to the greatest establishments, a
little house can no more compete than a diamond weighing but half a carat
can compete with a stone weighing fifty times as much. And this is a good
simile, because the perfect little house may be represented by a corner
cut from precisely the same stone and differing therefore merely in size
(and value naturally), whereas the house in bad taste and improperly run
may be represented by a diamond that is off color and full of flaws; or in
some instances, merely a piece of glass that to none but those as ignorant
as its owner, for a moment suggests a gem of value.

A gem of a house may be no size at all, but its lines are honest, and its
painting and window curtains in good taste. As for its upkeep, its path or
sidewalk is beautifully neat, steps scrubbed, brasses polished, and its
bell answered promptly by a trim maid with a low voice and quiet courteous
manner; all of which contributes to the impression of "quality" evens
though it in nothing suggests the luxury of a palace whose opened bronze
door reveals a row of powdered footmen.

But the "mansion" of bastard architecture and crude paint, with its brass
indifferently clean, with coarse lace behind the plate glass of its
golden-oak door, and the