coffee should be served from a side table by the servants
in attendance.

All dishes should be handed as at luncheon.

For the details of "Breakfast-table Arrangements and Serving Breakfast,"
see the work entitled "Waiting at Table."

The guests usually leave as soon as breakfast is over, unless the ladies
are invited by the hostess to accompany her to the drawing-room, or the
gentlemen are invited by the host to smoke a cigarette or cigar previous
to their departure.

* * * * *

=House Party Breakfasts.=--In the country the breakfast hour varies from
9 to 10.30, and in some country houses it is an understood thing that
the guests are at liberty to come down to breakfast at any time between
nine and half-past ten. In not a few country houses the hostess and the
ladies breakfast in their own rooms, and the gentlemen of the party
breakfast with the host in the breakfast-room.

The breakfast gong is a signal for assembling in the breakfast-room or
dining-room, but it is not the custom to wait for any one beyond five or
ten minutes.

The host and hostess at once take their places at the breakfast-table.

When the house-party is a large one, and space permits, a number of
small tables should be arranged in the breakfast-room, in addition to a
long breakfast-table.

The servants should remain in attendance during breakfast to wait upon
the guests.

There is no general move made from the breakfast table as in the case of
luncheon or dinner; the hostess generally remains until the whole of the
guests have at least commenced breakfast, save in the case of very late
comers, for whom she would not be expected to remain at the head of the
breakfast-table.

The guests leave the breakfast-table as soon as they have finished
breakfast, without waiting for any intimation from the hostess to do so.

CHAPTER XXVIII

PICNICS AND WATER-PARTIES

Many things contribute to draw people into the country and away from
town in the month of September; therefore there is a far larger number
in each and every neighbourhood inclined for a picnic or a water-party
than in the three previous months, June, July, and August.

Picnic parties are sometimes invitation parties, and on other occasions
contribution parties, or parties which partake in a measure of the
character of both.

* * * * *

=Picnics by Motor Car and Picnics by Rail.=--Almost every county has its