Stings and bites of insects should be kept wet with ammonia for ten or fifteen minutes, or covered with baking soda wet with water. Clean mud from a garden bed or a flowerpot is also excellent for them.
6. SERVING OF MEALS FOR THE SICK
Meals for people who are in bed are an emergency of housekeeping. In their preparation, economy should not be exercised unless it is grievously necessary. Sick people are easily annoyed and often have no appetite; sometimes they have even a disgust for food. The necessity then is that their food should be the best, the freshest, the most inviting and the most carefully cooked.
It is also important that food should be really hot or really cold when it is intended to be. Coffee or tea served in a little pot or in a covered pitcher rather than in a cup will be hotter and not spilled over into the saucer. Plates and cups which are to contain hot food should be heated very hot, they will be cool enough for use by the time they have been carried upstairs. If the tray must be carried any distance cover hot food with heated plates and bowls. For butter or ice cream or any food which must be cold to look or taste agreeable, chill the plate on which it is to be served and cover it with a chilled bowl or plate. In hot weather put the butter on a little lettuce leaf, or lay a tiny piece of ice beside it.
The appearance of an invalid's tray is often the cause of appetite or of the lack of it. The linen should always be perfectly fresh, the food in small quantities and daintily arranged. The dishes may well be the daintiest and prettiest in the house, and should be small enough for easy use. A flower or a geranium leaf is a pleasant addition to the tray.
Before bringing a meal to an invalid, go and see that she is comfortable. If one has not an invalid's table, it is well to put a pile of books or boxes on each side of the sick person on which the ends of the tray can rest. It takes strength and nerve to balance something on one's lap when half lying down.
7. GUESTS
Including guests in the chapter on emergencies is not intended as a discourtesy. They owe the classification to the fact that they are sometimes unexpected and always need a little special thought and care, however simply they are received.
It does not seem to me that the people who make no preparations whatever for guests are any more in the right than those who make themselves sick-in-bed getting ready for them.
It is not necessary to sweep the whole house, clean the attic and whitewash the cellar in preparation for a guest, but it does seem that a room should be carefully made ready for them and that more space should be cleared for their possessions than two hooks in the closet and perhaps a bureau drawer.