In refusing a dish at the table, one must say "No, thank you," or "No, thanks," or else one shakes one's head. A head can be shaken politely or rudely. To be courteously polite, and yet keep one's walls up is a thing every thoroughbred person knows how to do—and a thing that everyone who is trying to become such must learn to do.
A rule can't be given because there isn't any. As said in another chapter, a well-bred person always lives within the walls of his personal reserve, a vulgarian has no walls—or at least none that do not collapse at the slightest touch. But those who think they appear superior by being rude to others whom fortune has placed below them, might as well, did they but know it, shout their own unexalted origin to the world at large, since by no other method could it be more widely published.
The House With Limited Service
The fact that you live in a house with two servants, or in an apartment with only one, need not imply that your house lacks charm or even distinction, or that it is not completely the home of a lady or gentleman. But, as explained in the chapter on Dinners, if you have limited service you must devise systematic economy of time and labor or you will have disastrous consequences.
Every person, after all, has only one pair of hands, and a day has only so many hours, and one thing is inevitable, which young housekeepers are apt to forget, a few can not do the work of many, and do it in the same way. It is all very well if the housemaid can not get into young Mrs. Gilding's room until lunch time, nor does it matter if its confusion looks like the aftermath of a cyclone. The housemaid has nothing to do the rest of the day but put that one room and bath in order. But in young Mrs. Gaily's small house where the housemaid is also the waitress, who is supposed to be "dressed" for lunch, it does not have to be pointed out that she can not sweep, dust, tidy up rooms, wash out bathtubs, polish fixtures, and at the same time be dressed in afternoon clothes. If Mrs. Gaily is out for lunch, it is true the chambermaid-waitress need not be dressed to wait on table, but her thoughtless young mistress would not be amiable if a visitor were to ring the door-bell in the early afternoon and have it opened by a maid in a rumpled "working" dress.
Supposing the time to put the bedroom in order is from ten to eleven each morning: it is absolutely necessary that Mrs. Gaily take her bath before ten so that even if she is not otherwise "dressed" she can be out of her bedroom and bath at ten o'clock promptly. She can go elsewhere while her room is done up and then come back and finish dressing later. In this case she must herself "tidy" any disorder that she makes in dressing; put away her négligé and slippers and put back anything out of place. On the days when Mr. Gaily does not go to the office he too must get up and out so that the house can be put in order.
The One Maid Alone
But where one maid alone cooks, cleans, waits on table, and furthermore serves as lady's maid and valet, she must necessarily be limited in the performance of each of these duties in direct proportion to their number. Even though she be eagerly willing, quality must give way before quantity produced with the same equipment, or if quality is necessary then quantity must give way. In the house of a fashionable gay couple like the Lovejoys' for instance, the time spent in "maiding" or "valeting" has to be taken from cleaning or cooking. Besides cleaning and cooking, the one maid in their small apartment can press out Mrs. Lovejoy's dresses and do a little mending, but she can not sit down and spend one or two hours going over a dress in the way a specialist maid can. Either Mrs. Lovejoy herself must do the sewing or the housework, or one or the other must be left undone.
The Management Of Servants
It is certainly a greater pleasure and incentive to work for those who are appreciative than for those who continually find fault. Everyone who did war work can not fail to remember how easy it was to work for, or with, some people, and how impossible to get anything done for others. And just as the "heads" of work-rooms or "wards" or "canteens" were either stimulating or dispiriting, so must they and their types also be to those who serve in their households.