t was time to dress for dinner.

When the bride went to her room (which adjoined that of her husband) she
found her bath drawn, her clothes laid out, and the dressing-table lights
lighted.

That night the bride wore her cerise dress to one of the smartest dinners
she ever went down to, and when they went up-stairs and she at last saw
her husband alone, she took him to task. "Why in the name of goodness
didn't you tell me the truth about these people?"

"Oh," said he abashed, "I told you it was a little house--it was you who
insisted on bringing that red dress. I told you it was too handsome!"

"Handsome!" she cried in tears, "I don't own anything half good enough to
compare with the least article in this house. That 'simple' little woman
as you call her would, I think, almost make a queen seem provincial! And
as for her clothes, they are priceless--just as everything is in this
little gem of a house. Why, the window curtains are as fine as the best
clothes in my trousseau."

The two houses contrasted above are two extremes, but each a luxury. The
Oldnames' expenditure, though in no way comparable with the Worldlys' or
the Gildings,' is far beyond any purse that can be called moderate.

The really moderate purse inevitably precludes a woman from playing an
important role as hostess, for not even the greatest magnetism and charm
can make up to spoiled guests for lack of essential comfort. The only
exceptions are a bungalow at the seashore or a camp in the woods, where a
confirmed luxury-lover is desperately uncomfortable for the first
twenty-four hours, but invariably gets used to the lack of comfort almost
as soon as he gets dependent upon it; and plunging into a lake for bath,
or washing in a little tin basin, sleeping on pine boughs without any
sheets at all, eating tinned foods and flapjacks on tin plates with tin
utensils, he seems to lack nothing when the air is like champagne and the
company first choice.

=GUEST ROOM SERVICE=

If a visitor brings no maid of her own, the personal maid of the hostess
(if she has one--otherwise the housemaid) always unpacks the bags or
trunks, lays toilet articles out on the dressing-table and in the
bathroom, puts folded things in the drawers and hangs dresses on hangers
in the closet. If when she unpacks she sees that something of importance
has been forgotten, she tells her mistress, or, in the case of a servant
who has been long employed, she knows what selection to mak