e some toast," but it is usual and instinctive to every
lady or gentleman to add "please."

In refusing a dish at the table, one must say "No, thank you," or "No,
thanks," or else one shakes one's head. A head can be shaken politely or
rudely. To be courteously polite, and yet keep one's walls up is a thing
every thoroughbred person knows how to do--and a thing that everyone who
is trying to become such must learn to do.

A rule can't be given because there isn't any. As said in another chapter,
a well-bred person always lives within the walls of his personal reserve,
a vulgarian has no walls--or at least none that do not collapse at the
slightest touch. But those who think they appear superior by being rude to
others whom fortune has placed below them, might as well, did they but
know it, shout their own unexalted origin to the world at large, since by
no other method could it be more widely published.

=THE HOUSE WITH LIMITED SERVICE=

The fact that you live in a house with two servants, or in an apartment
with only one, need not imply that your house lacks charm or even
distinction, or that it is not completely the home of a lady or gentleman.
But, as explained in the chapter on Dinners, if you have limited service
you must devise systematic economy of time and labor or you will have
disastrous consequences.

Every person, after all, has only one pair of hands, and a day has only so
many hours, and one thing is inevitable, which young housekeepers are apt
to forget, a few can not do the work of many, and do it in the same way.
It is all very well if the housemaid can not get into young Mrs. Gilding's
room until lunch time, nor does it matter if its confusion looks like the
aftermath of a cyclone. The housemaid has nothing to do the rest of the
day but put that one room and bath in order. But in young Mrs. Gaily's
small house where the housemaid is also the waitress, who is supposed to
be "dressed" for lunch, it does not have to be pointed out that she can
not sweep, dust, tidy up rooms, wash out bathtubs, polish fixtures, and at
the same time be dressed in afternoon clothes. If Mrs. Gaily is out for
lunch, it is true the chambermaid-waitress need not be dressed to wait on
table, but her thoughtless young mistress would not be amiable if a
visitor were to ring the door-bell in the early afternoon and have it
opened by a maid in a rumpled "working" dress.

Supposing the time to put the bedroom in order is from t