"I certainly shall never learn enough to marry on, I see that. But tell me more while we are on this subject. How do you have such a pretty table all the time and still economize in everything, including time and strength? I should think it would take both money and labor to keep up as you do."
"To speak with seriousness still, then, I am convinced most girls make a great mistake when, after having had pretty things all their lives, they marry on a small income and one by one give up their dainty little ways of doing. Sometimes they put everything on the table at once at dinner; sometimes they have a tablecloth that has seen better days; sometimes they dispense with a fern-dish, or stop cleaning the silver. I call it all bad management. One can keep up the traditions of niceness just as easily as to dispense with them, and to my mind it is false economy to let down. If you must have plain food, it tastes better, and I believe it nourishes you more, if it is set out attractively. No, Dolly, never give up using your pretty dishes and doilies, and keep your silver and glass bright, and learn to do it so easily that it is a matter of course, and it will never be the last straw that reduces you to nervous prostration, as some women believe. Ugly things, soiled and broken things, and careless living, are far more likely to wear out your nerves than trifles such as I am telling you to attend to."
"But as to details, Mary. Take your breakfast and lunch-table; there are those doilies, always clean and white, and your pretty blue and white china. How about the laundress's bills and the cost of the dishes?"
"There is no economy, to my thinking, greater than is found in using doilies, to begin with. I put them on as you see, always, for two meals. When one gets mussed or gets a spot on it I wash it out when I do my dishes; I have an iron on and press it as soon as it dries, right here in the kitchen, and it is ready for next time. When they all need a regular boiling, I put a set in the weekly wash, and the laundress does them in far less time than she would a tablecloth. For dinner of course I do use a cloth, but having it on only once a day it lasts a week, and there is but one in the wash instead of two or three, as there would be otherwise. If a spot comes on this I rub it out in a hand-basin and stretch the cloth out smoothly on the table and leave it to dry; then if it is rough, I put on an iron for a moment. Of course I should not use a soiled cloth under any circumstances."
"And the china?"
"That is just cheap blue and white Japanese stuff that I have picked up a piece at a time, sometimes at the ten-cent stores; it would chip in the hands of some maids, I suppose, but I am careful of it. If I had a maid who broke things I would get other and heavier kinds of blue and white; there are plenty that are cheap and pretty. I love blue and white for breakfast and luncheon."
"And how often do you clean the silver?"
"I wash it every day in very hot soapsuds and dry it quickly; that keeps it bright a long time. Then usually I polish it all once a week, some rainy afternoon when I am not pressed for time."
"Well, this is all a revelation to me. I supposed people who 'did their own work,' as we say, had to have everything very plain, and, to be honest, very uncomfortable. I supposed they put on a dinner-cloth in the morning and kept the table set most of the day, and saved steps by having on all the food at once at each meal. I hate that way of living, too. But how do you do about waiting on the table? Do you keep jumping up and down all the time?"