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small plates have been so good-sized as to well cover the hot plates underneath them and so protect them from cream, all you have to do is to take these off, leaving the larger plates, using your tray this time and standing always on the right; put the first dish on the tray and take the next in your hand and carry them to the sideboard and leave them there and then take the next two, and so on; never pile your plates. Then pass the bacon around, going to the left, as with the fruit, and then the potato and muffins. Bring the cups on the tray, as your mother fills them, and set them down carefully at each person's right; do not offer a cup to any one, because coffee is so easily spilled in taking it off and on a tray and handing it about.

      "Few people would ever have fruit, cereal, hot things, and then cakes, too; but some day you may have fruit, bacon or meat, and then cakes, so you had better learn how to manage with them. Just have ready small, hot plates, and bring one at a time and exchange it with the meat plate as you did before; you must put on two forks instead of one at the left of each plate when you lay the table, if you are to have a second hot course.

      "You do not take off the crumbs at breakfast because it is such an informal meal, but you must watch and see if any tumbler needs refilling, or if anybody needs a second butter ball, and supply it without being asked. The meat platter, the dish of potatoes, and the muffins or toast should also be offered twice to every one. Your mother, however, will ask if any one wants a second cup of coffee, and then you bring her the cup, and after she has rinsed it out by pouring in hot water from her little pitcher, she will fill it and you can carry it back and set it down again. Now that is all, I think, and you can wash your hands and take off your gingham apron and ask Bridget if you may call down the family; that is, if you may say to your mother, very quietly and politely, 'Breakfast is served!'" Margaret laughed, and smoothed down her nice crisp white apron proudly as she left the room.

LUNCHEON

      Laying the luncheon-table proved to be exactly like laying the breakfast-table, and, as her aunt said, if they were laying a supper-table that would have also been done in the same way; so really all Margaret had to learn was how to lay two tables, one for breakfast, luncheon or supper, and one for dinner.

      However, her aunt thought they would use doilies instead of the lunch-cloth for a change, so Margaret would not think her lesson did not amount to much, and she got these out at lunch time and put one down for each person with its square of felt underneath it. In the middle she put a large doily which matched the others, and added one or two smaller ones, one for bread, one for a dish of olives, and so on, arranging them evenly on the table. She put a dish of ferns on for a centrepiece and a tray for tea for her mother at the end.

      "If," said her aunt, "you wish a formal luncheon you lay a pretty plate – a cold one – in front of each place, and exchange this for a hot one when you pass the main dish. But when you are just laying a family table you can put a hot plate down and merely pass the food as usual. You need not put the dishes of food on the table – just bring them from the sideboard. But remember at every meal never to let the food get cold. The vegetables you can keep in covered dishes, of course, but after you have passed everything so you can leave the room, carry the meat out and put it in the oven until you want to pass it a second time.

      "If you are to have salad, have this ready on the sideboard before lunch, with its plates, and, if you are to have them, the crackers and cheese also. You can take off the soiled plates after the meat course, and lay down clean ones just as before, standing at each person's right, taking off the soiled plate with the left hand and laying 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.

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