The Late Guest

A polite hostess waits twenty minutes after the dinner hour, and then orders dinner served. To wait more than twenty minutes, or actually fifteen after those who took the allowable five minutes grace, would be showing lack of consideration to many for the sake of one. When the late guest finally enters the dining-room, the hostess rises, shakes hands with her, but does not leave her place at table. She doesn't rise for a gentleman. It is the guest who must go up to the hostess and apologize for being late. The hostess must never take the guest to task, but should say something polite and conciliatory such as, " I was sure you would not want us to wait dinner! " The newcomer is usually served with dinner from the beginning unless she is considerate enough to say to the butler, " Just let me begin with this course."

Old Mrs. Toplofty's manners to late guests are an exception: on the last stroke of eight o'clock in winter and half after eight in Newport, dinner is announced. She waits for no one! Furthermore, a guest arriving after a course has been served, does not have to protest against disarranging the order of dinner since the rule of the house is that a course which has passed a chair is not to be returned. A guest missing his " turn" misses that course. The result is that everyone dining with Mrs. Toplofty arrives on the stroke of the dinner hour; which is also rather necessary, as she is one of those who like the service to be rushed through at top speed, and anyone arriving half an hour late would find dinner over.

It would be excellent discipline if there were more hostesses like her, but no young woman could be so autocratic and few older ones care (or dare) to be. Nothing shows selfish want of consideration more than being habitually late for dinner. Not only are others, who were themselves considerate, kept waiting, but dinner is dried and ruined for everyone else through the fault of the tardy one. And though expert cooks know how to keep food from becoming uneatable, no food can be so good as at the moment for which it is prepared, and the habitually late guest should be made to realize how unfairly she is meeting her hostess' generosity by destroying for every one the hospitality which she was invited to share.

On the other hand, before a formal dinner, it is the duty of the hostess to be dressed and in her drawing-room fifteen, or ten minutes at least, before the hour set for dinner. For a very informal dinner it is not important to be ready ahead of time, but even then a late hostess is an inconsiderate one.