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