In the same building are two squash courts, a racquet court, a court tennis court, and a bowling alley.  But the feature of the guest building is a glass-roofed and enclosed riding ring—­not big enough for games of polo, but big enough for practise in winter,—­built along one entire side of it.

The stables are full of polo ponies and hunters, the garage full of cars, the boathouse has every sort of boat—­sailboats, naphtha launches, a motor boat and even a shell.  Every amusement is open-heartedly offered, in fact, especially devised for the guests.

At the main house there is a ballroom with a stage at one end.  An orchestra plays every night.  New moving pictures are shown and vaudeville talent is imported from New York.  This is the extreme of luxury in entertaining.  As Mrs. Toplofty said at the end of a bewilderingly lavish party:  “How are any of us ever going to amuse any one after this?  I feel like doing my guest rooms up in moth balls.”

No one, however, has discovered that invitations to Mrs. Toplofty’s are any less welcome.  Besides, excitement-loving youth and exercise-devotees were never favored guests at the Hudson Manor anyway.

=THE SMALL HOUSE OF PERFECTION=

It matters not in the slightest whether the guest room’s carpet is Aubusson or rag, whether the furniture is antique, or modern, so long as it is pleasing of its kind.  On the other hand, because a house is little is no reason that it can not be as perfect in every detail—­perhaps more so—­as the palace of the multiest millionaire!

The attributes of the perfect house can not be better represented than by Brook Meadows Farm, the all-the-year home of the Oldnames.  Nor can anything better illustrate its perfection than an incident that actually took place there.

A great friend of the Oldnames, but not a man who went at all into society, or considered whether people had position or not, was invited with his new wife—­a woman from another State and of much wealth and discernment—­to stay over a week-end at Brook Meadows.  Never having met the Oldnames, she asked something about their house and life in order to decide what type of clothes to pack.

“Oh, it’s just a little farmhouse.  Oldname wears a dinner coat, of course; his wife wears—­I don’t know what—­but I have never seen her dressed up a bit!”

“Evidently plain people,” thought his wife.  And aloud:  “I wonder what evening dress I have that is high enough.  I can put in the black lace day dress; perhaps I had better put in my cerise satin——­”

“The cerise?” asked her husband, “Is that the red you had on the other night?  It is much too handsome, much!  I tell you, Mrs. Oldname never wears a dress that you could notice.  She always looks like a lady, but she isn’t a dressy sort of person at all.”

So the bride packed her plainest (that is her cheapest) clothes, but at the last, she put in the “cerise.”