Page:Bedroom and Boudoir.djvu/125



ERHAPS the kindliest and wisest advice with regard to a spare room, would be the same as Punch's famous counsel to young people about to marry—a short and emphatic "Don't." In a large country house, perhaps even in a small country house, the case is different, for the spare room too often represents all the social variety which the owners can hope for, from year's end to year's end—and the only change from town life possible to half the bees in the great hive. It is scarcely possible to imagine an English country house, be it ever so humble, without its spare room, or the warm cordial welcome which would be sure to greet its succeeding inhabitants. How fresh and sweet and dainty do its simple appointments look to jaded eyes! how grateful its deep stillness to world-deafened ears! How impossible, in a brief summer