2. Two young girls who
are friends and have volunteered, because
the house is crowded, to room
together in a room with two beds.
3. On an occasion such as a wedding, a ball, or an intercollegiate athletic event, young people don’t mind for one night (that is spent for the greater part “up”) how many are doubled; and house room is limited merely to cot space, sofas, and even the billiard table.
But she would be a very clumsy hostess, who, for a week-end, filled her house like a sardine box to the discomfort and resentment of every one.
In the well-appointed house, every guest room has a bath adjoining for itself alone, or shared with a connecting room and used only by a man and wife, two women or two men. A bathroom should never (if avoidable) be shared by a woman and a man. A suitable accommodation for a man and wife is a double room with bath and a single room next.
=THE GUEST ROOM=
The perfect guest room is not necessarily a vast chamber decorated in an historically correct period. Its perfection is the result of nothing more difficult to attain than painstaking attention to detail, and its possession is within the reach of every woman who has the means to invite people to her house in the first place. The ideal guest room is never found except in the house of the ideal hostess, and it is by no means “idle talk” to suggest that every hostess be obliged to spend twenty-four hours every now and then in each room that is set apart for visitors. If she does not do this actually, she should do so in imagination. She should occasionally go into the guest bathroom and draw the water in every fixture, to see there is no stoppage and that the hot water faucets are not seemingly jokes of the plumber. If a man is to occupy the bathroom, she must see that the hook for a razor strop is not missing, and that there is a mirror by which he can see to shave both at night and by daylight. Even though she can see to powder her nose, it would be safer to make her husband bathe and shave both a morning and an evening in each bathroom and then listen carefully to what he says about it!
Even though she has a perfect housemaid, it is not unwise occasionally to make sure herself that every detail has been attended to; that in every bathroom there are plenty of bath towels, face towels, a freshly laundered wash rag, bath mat, a new cake of unscented bath soap in the bathtub soap rack, and a new cake of scented soap on the washstand.
It is not expected, but it is often very nice to find violet water, bath salts, listerine, talcum powder, almond or other hand or sunburn lotion, in decorated bottles on the washstand shelf; but to cover the dressing-table in the bedroom with brushes and an array of toilet articles is more of a nuisance than a comfort. A good clothes brush and whiskbroom are usually very acceptable, as strangely enough, guests almost invariably forget them.