In the case of this first formal dinner with your aunt’s present servants, you will have to be on the spot most of the morning if you want to take a rest in the afternoon. You can give the dining-room up to the dinner that day and lunch at a side-table or in the library. After your short interview of encouragement with the cook, you read to the waitress and chambermaid the directions for serving the dinner and see that they understand their parts in it, and try to make them ambitious that everything should go well and be a credit to them. You then pin these directions up in the pantry. These directions can be used for many dinners until they are worn out. After this you superintend putting on the under-pad and then the tablecloth which must be very smooth. The chambermaid must help the waitress, as it takes two to put on a large cloth without mussing it. Watch the waitress put the eight plates around the table, to be sure they are evenly spaced (two on each side, if the table is wide enough; otherwise with eight there must be a gentleman at the head and another at the foot in order not to have two gentlemen or two ladies side by side). Next have the waitress set one place completely, under your directions, with small silver, glasses, and napkins as in the family dinner (only more, as the courses require[1]), so that she can set all the places like it without your being there to direct her. Leave her to put fresh candles in the candlesticks, and a final polish on the china, silver, and glass that are to be used during the dinner, while you arrange the flowers. No matter how nicely any one keeps house, there is a great deal for the servants to think of for a dinner, and as they have never served one for you before, should you get the impression in the morning that things are not going on very well, you will have to be in the dining-room a good deal, quietly seeing that no time is lost. Footnote 1: If you don’t like so many forks and knives on the table at once, put enough for the first three courses and have the others brought on with the plates of each course as in the case of dessert. After the lunch things have been cleared off and the servants have had their lunch, you superintend the setting of the side-table with the extra things that will be needed during the dinner, such as the plates for cold courses, any small silver that may be needed, a plate for the extra bread and rolls, and all the plates for the last course, on each of which is a doily, and a finger bowl one third full of water. All these things should be prettily arranged in a symmetrical manner, and if there isn’t room on the side-table some can go on the sideboard, as they must all be convenient.