If the chaperons have
apparently no one to talk to she should introduce one of her own
relatives, if she cannot give much of her own attention to them, and she
should arrange that all her guests are taken in to supper.

* * * * *

=At large afternoon "at homes"= the hostess receives her guests at the
open door of the drawing-room, and has little more time to bestow upon
each than at a ball or an "at home." At small afternoon "at homes" she
should receive them in the drawing-room, and should rise and shake hands
with each arrival.

A hostess should receive her dinner guests in the drawing-room, and
should shake hands with each in the order of arrival. She occasionally
finds it a trying ordeal to sustain conversation between the arrival of
dinner guests and the dinner being served; sometimes this is prolonged
for three-quarters of an hour through the non-appearance of a guest who
must be waited for. A hostess should, although she knows that her dinner
is spoilt by being thus kept back, endeavour to make the time pass as
pleasantly as possible, by rendering the conversation general and by
making the guests acquainted with each other. The hostess who can tide
over these awkward occurrences so that the postponement of dinner from
half to three-quarters of an hour is hardly perceived, proves herself to
be entitled to be considered a good hostess.

CHAPTER XLI

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LADY PATRONESSES OF PUBLIC BALLS

=Ladies are frequently solicited= to allow their names to be placed on
the lists of lady patronesses of charity balls. A ball committee is
desirous of obtaining a list of influential names to lend _eclat_ and
prestige to the ball, and a charity ball often numbers amongst its lady
patronesses the names of many of the leading members of the nobility,
followed by those of the wives of the leading county gentry, or by the
principal residents of a watering-place or county town; but it is
understood, as a rule, that the duty of giving vouchers or tickets for a
charity ball is undertaken by those ladies who are more directly
interested in it, whose husbands are on the committee, who make a point
of annually attending it, and thus are principally concerned in keeping
it select; and although in many counties and in many towns lady
patronesses, members of the nobility, do attend, yet it not unfrequently
happens that out of a long list of great ladies only three or four are
pres