will be at home
on Saturday the fifth of December
from four until six o'clock
The Fitz-Cherry
Rosalie has no very near relatives and Miss Titherington has brought her up.
In sending out the invitations for a dinner (a young girl would not be giving a formal dinner) Rosalie telephones her friends "Will you dine with me (or us) next Monday?" or, "On the sixteenth?" It is not necessary to mention Miss Titherington because it is taken for granted that she will be present.
It is also not considered proper for a young girl ever to be alone as hostess. When she invites young girls and men to her house, Miss Titherington either "receives" them or comes into the room while they are there. If the time is afternoon, very likely she pours tea and when everyone has been helped, she goes into another room. She does not stay with them ever, but she is never very far away.
The chaperon (or a parent) should never go to bed until the last young man has left the house. It is an unforgivable breach of decorum to allow a young girl to sit up late at night with a young man—or a number of them. On returning home from a party, she must not invite or allow a man to "come in for a while." Even her fiancé must bid her good night at the door if the hour is late, and some one ought always to sit up, or get up, to let her in. No young girl ought to let herself in with a latch-key.
In old-fashioned days no lady had a latch-key. And it is still fitting and proper for a servant to open the door for her.
A young girl may not, even with her fiancé, lunch in a road house without a chaperon, or go on a journey that can by any possibility last over night. To go out with him in a small sail-boat sounds harmless enough, but might result in a questionable situation if they are becalmed, or if they are left helpless in a sudden fog. The Maine coast, for example, is particularly subject to fogs that often shut down without warning and no one going out on the water can tell whether he will be able to get back within a reasonable time or not. A man and a girl went out from Bar Harbor and did not get back until next day. Everyone knew the fog had come in as thick as pea-soup and that it was impossible to get home; but to the end of time her reputation will suffer for the experience.