You have been at home for so few meals you don't quite know how
experienced they are. Your cook at least makes good coffee and eggs and
toast for breakfast, and the few other meals she has cooked seemed to be
all right, and she is such a nice clean person!
So when your house is "in order" and the last pictures and curtains are
hung, the impulse suddenly comes to you to give a dinner! Your husband
thinks it is a splendid idea. It merely remains to decide whom you will
ask. You hesitate between a few of your own intimates, or older people,
and decide it would be such fun to ask a few of the hostesses whose houses
you have almost lived at ever since you "came out." You decide to ask Mrs.
Toplofty, Mr. Clubwin Doe, the Worldlys, the Gildings, and the Kindharts
and the Wellborns. With yourselves that makes twelve. You can't have more
than twelve because you have only a dozen of everything; in fact you
decide that twelve will be pretty crowded, but that it will be safe to ask
that number because a few are sure to "regret." So you write notes (since
it is to be a formal dinner), and--they all accept! You are a little
worried about the size of the dining-room, but you are overcome by the
feeling of your popularity. Now the thing to do is to prepare for a
dinner. The fact that Nora probably can't make fancy dishes does not
bother you a bit. In your mind's eye you see delicious plain food passed;
you must get Sigrid a dress that properly fits her, and Delia, the
chambermaid (who was engaged with the understanding that she was to serve
in the dining-room when there was company), has not yet been at table, but
she is a very willing young person who will surely look well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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