of the difference in age but because Lucy Gilding smokes like a
furnace and is miserable unless she can play bridge for high stakes, and,
just as soon as she can bolt through dinner, sit at a card table; while
Mrs. Highbrow and Mrs. Oncewere quite possibly disapprove of women's
smoking and are surely horrified at "gambling." The Smartlings won't do
either, for the same reason, nor the Gaylies. She can't ask the Newell
Riches either, because Mrs. Oldworld and Mrs. Wellborn both dislike
vulgarity too much to find compensation in qualities which are merely
amusing. So she ends by adding her own friends the Kindharts and the
Normans, who "go" with everyone, and a few somewhat younger people, and
approves her secretary's suggestions as to additional names if those first
invited should "regret."

The list being settled, Mrs. Worldly's own work is done. She sends word to
her cook that there will be twenty-four on the tenth; the menu will be
submitted to her later, which she will probably merely glance at and send
back. She never sees or thinks about her table, which is in the butler's
province.

On the morning of the dinner her secretary brings her the place cards,
(the name of each person expected, written on a separate card) and she
puts them in the order in which they are to be placed on the table, very
much as though playing solitaire. Starting with her own card at one end
and her husband's at the other, she first places the lady of honor on
his right, the second in importance on his left. Then on either side of
herself, she puts the two most important gentlemen. The others she fits in
between, trying to seat side by side those congenial to each other.

[Illustration: "DETAIL OF PLACE SET AT A FORMAL DINNER TABLE OF A GREAT
HOUSE." [Page 179.]]

When the cards are arranged, the secretary attends to putting the name of
the lady who sits on each gentleman's right in the envelope addressed to
him. She then picks up the place cards still stacked in their proper
sequence, and takes them to the butler who will put them in the order
arranged on the table after it is set.

Fifteen minutes before the dinner hour, Mrs. Worldly is already standing
in her drawing-room. She has no personal responsibility other than that of
being hostess. The whole machinery of equipment and service runs seemingly
by itself. It does not matter whether she knows what the menu is. Her cook
is more than capable of attending to it. That the table shall