I think every one who possibly can should possess something in the shape of a spare room, although, as I remarked in one of my former chapters, I have suffered so much from my visitors that I approach the subject feeling as if I at least could not have very much sympathy with it. And in no case will I advise any one to set apart for the use of the occasional visitor one of the best rooms in the house, as is far too often the case in those houses where the spare room should be either the nursery itself or a room for some of the children of the house! I have once or twice been literally so horrified at finding the room I should have at once given for the children set apart for visitors as a matter of course, and quite without a second thought, that I am compelled to speak rather more emphatically, perhaps, on this subject than I otherwise should do; but, after all, the house is the children’s home, and for their sake I must beg attention from those who, as a matter of course, take the best rooms themselves, the second and third best for visitors, and then any rooms that may be over for the little ones, keeping the worst of all for ‘the boys,’ as if boys were raging beasts, to be put out of sight and hearing as far as ever the limits of the house would allow. Whilst recognising that a spare room is a necessary and pleasant thing, at once, so as to disarm criticism, I must ask my kind, good readers to ponder for a moment on what putting aside the very best room for one’s friends means in an ordinary building where there are at the most three or four rooms on the floor above the ‘reception’ rooms, to use a house-agent’s term, which said term means a great deal more than perhaps meets the eye at first. It means keeping empty, perhaps, three parts of the year the brightest and most cheerful apartments, and it means relegating the children to inferior rooms, which, with a little taste and common-sense, can be made pretty, comfortable, and charming for your friends, who come presumably to see you, and not to spend the best part of their time in their bedrooms, for if they do they may just as well have stopped at home. Now there is a great deal, to my mind, that can be written about the ethics of visiting that insensibly calls for attention, when we ponder over that problem of a spare room, and that may perhaps not be out of place, so I dwell for a few moments upon them before going into the decorative details of this particular chamber. One of the latest fads of social life is to do away with introductions at parties, and another is to ask people to stay with us, and, from the moment they enter our doors to the moment they leave them, to go on with our own occupations and engagements, exactly as if we had no friends staying with us; or rather as if we kept an hotel, and the comings in and goings out of our guests had no more to do with us than have those of the people staying in an inn to the people who keep it.