how desperately wretched you were.

If you know anyone who is always in demand, not only for dinners, but for
trips on private cars and yachts, and long visits in country houses, you
may be very sure of one thing: the popular person is first of all
unselfish or else extremely gifted; very often both.

The perfect guest not only tries to wear becoming clothes but tries to put
on an equally becoming mental attitude. No one is ever asked out very much
who is in the habit of telling people all the misfortunes and ailments she
has experienced or witnessed, though the perfect guest listens with
apparent sympathy to every one else's. Another attribute of the perfect
guest is never to keep people waiting. She is always ready for
anything--or nothing. If a plan is made to picnic, she likes picnics above
everything and proves her liking by enthusiastically making the sandwiches
or the salad dressing or whatever she thinks she makes best. If, on the
other hand, no one seems to want to do anything, the perfect guest has
always a book she is absorbed in, or a piece of sewing she is engrossed
with, or else beyond everything she would love to sit in an easy chair and
do nothing.

She never for one moment thinks of herself, but of the other people she is
thrown with. She is a person of sympathy always, and instantaneous
discernment. She is good tempered no matter what happens, and makes the
most of everything as it comes. At games she is a good loser, and a quiet
winner. She has a pleasant word, an amusing story, and agreeable comment
for most occasions, but she is neither gushing nor fulsome. She has merely
acquired a habit, born of many years of arduous practise, of turning
everything that looks like a dark cloud as quickly as possible for the
glimmer of a silver lining.

She is as sympathetic to children as to older people; she cuts out
wonderful paper dolls and soldier hats, always leisurely and easily as
though it cost neither time nor effort. She knows a hundred stories or
games, every baby and every dog goes to her on sight, not because she has
any especial talent, except that one she has cultivated, the talent of
interest in everyone and everything except herself. Few people know that
there is such a talent or that it can be cultivated.

She has more than mere beauty; she has infinite charm, and she is so well
born that she is charming to everyone. Her manner to a duke who happens to
be staying in the house is not a bit mo