down the clean one with the right, holding it above the other. Then pass the salad, on the tray to each one's left, and next the salad dressing or crackers or olives, or whatever goes with it. After the salad, crumb the table, both at luncheon and supper, but if you use doilies do not take the regular crumb-knife and tray, but carry a folded napkin in your right hand and gently sweep off the crumbs into the tray; a knife might scratch the table, and would certainly sound disagreeable against the wood.

"The dessert, which may be fruit, should be ready before the meal on the sideboard, with the plates and finger-bowls. When the last course before it is taken off and the crumbs removed, there are no plates on the table at all; it is the one time when it is cleared. So all you have to do is to lay down the plates and finger-bowls with the fruit-knives and spoons and pass the fruit. If you have cake, or preserves, or dessert of any kind instead of fruit, you do just the same way; lay down the plates and pass the things."

"But what do I do with the tray and teacups?" Margaret asked.

"Take them off when you do the last plates before the table is crumbed," said her aunt. "Take off the bread and butter plates, too. A good way to do this is to take the large plate on the tray and carry the small one in the hand. Of course the large bread plate is removed, too, and any dish of jelly or olives which is done with. But dishes of salted nuts or candies are left on, to keep the table looking pretty. Now I really think that is all. Do you think you can serve luncheon as well as you did breakfast?"

Margaret said she thought she ought to do twice as well, because it was really the same thing over again.

DINNER

If the lesson on dinner had come first Margaret would have thought it pretty hard, but after the other two she had just had, it seemed easy enough.

This time she put on the large pad and the long, heavy dinner-cloth; her aunt had to stand at the opposite end of the table and help her with these, and she warned her to always be very careful not to crease the cloth, because a mussed cloth was worse than none at all.

"Be careful always to have table linen spotless," she said. "If anything gets on the cloth at dinner, as soon as the meal is over put a cup under the place and pour a tiny stream of hot water through and then rub the place gently with a clean, dry cloth and smooth it out with your hand; leave the cloth on the table till morning, and usually it will be smooth and dry; if not, take a flat-iron then and quickly and lightly iron the place; then fold the cloth and lay it away. Most people cannot have a new cloth on every night, but no one need ever have on a cloth that is not clean; a good housekeeper never does, so of course you never will." Margaret said she certainly never would.

"One reason why we use doilies or a lunch-cloth for breakfast and luncheon and supper is because if these get soiled it is easy to wash them out at once; it makes housework simpler in the end to have them instead of using table-cloths three times a day, which are large and very troublesome to wash. People who once learn to use them never go back to the old-fashioned way of doing. Now get a pretty centrepiece and put that on in the middle, and bring the bunch of roses from the parlor; we will have them to-night instead of the fern-dish, because we want an especially nice table for you."

After the flowers were on, the silver was laid, almost as at breakfast. A knife at the right, blade to the plate; a dessert-spoon beyond, for soup; two forks at the left; the bread and butter plate at the top, at the left, and the tumbler also at the top, to the right. If they were having a company dinner, Margaret was told, the bread and butter plate would not be used, for then a dinner roll would be laid in the napkin and no butter served at all. The napkin, as before, went to the left, beyond the forks, and a large, cold plate was laid down between the silver. The salts were freshly filled and put on, and a glass dish for jelly at one end of the table. In front of her father's place they laid a carving cloth, and on it a large knife and fork, putting the tips on a little rest.

Next they took the soup-plates, the dinner-plates, the large platter and two vegetable dishes out into the kitchen to be made hot; they also carried out the bread-plate, the salad-bowl, and the pudding-dish, as well as the after-dinner coffee-cups and saucers. Then they arranged the plates for salad on the sideboard, and the dessert-plates, putting a dessert-spoon and fork for each person on these. While the dinner was getting ready came the lesson in waiting, as before.

"You see we have laid down cold plates," the aunt said. "Some people lay down hot ones, as we did at luncheon, but the soup is so likely to soil them that it is really hardly safe. Besides, dinner is a more formal meal than the others, so we must be more particular. When Bridget brings in the tureen she will stand it on the sideboard with the hot soup-plates, and you are to dip a spoonful of soup carefully in each plate and carry it on your tray to each person's right and set it down,—do not offer it on the left. When all are served, carry out the tureen. If we had no waitress of course your mother would serve the soup from the table, but this is the way we do when we are nicely waited on.

"When it is time to carry off the soup-plates, take your tray and go to each person's right and lift the plate, putting the first one on the tray and taking the next in your hand. Put them on the sideboard, and carry them out later, very quietly, but do not stop now. Leave the cold plate on the table still. Then bring in the hot plates and put them in a pile in front of the carver, slipping out his cold plate first. Bring in the vegetables and put them on the sideboard; last of all bring in the meat and set it before the carver; do not leave the room after the meat is on the table, for it will get cold.

"As each plate is filled, take it to the first person served—your mother, if you are a family party, and either your mother or a woman guest first, if you have company; some people always have the mother served first even if guests are present, and others prefer the other way; but always serve the ladies first, whether guests are there or not. Slip out the cold plate and lay down the hot one at the right, as you have before, and put the cold plates neatly in a pile on the sideboard. Pass the vegetables next, offering them at the left, and then the bread in the same way. While this course is eaten, carry out the soup-plates, if they are still on the sideboard, and fill the glasses.

"When all have finished take off the roast first and carry it out; then take off the soiled plates and lay down the salad-plates at the right, as you have done each time, and pass the salad to the left. Take off these when they are used, with the bread and butter plates, bread and jelly, and crumb the table, using the knife and tray. Then lay down before each one a dessert-plate with either a fork or a dessert-spoon on it, or both, if the dish to come needs them; nowadays this is done even where the dessert is served at one end of the table. If you can, pass the pudding, or whatever the sweet is, so that each one can serve himself, offering it at the left, of course. If it is very soft, or is something difficult for one to manage in this way, then have the dish put at one end of the table before your mother. She will put a portion on the plate before her, removing the spoon as she does so and laying it at one side, and you can set the