If there are a good many guests there may be a maid at hand to pass cups and offer the plates of sandwiches and sweets. But, as a rule, the affair is so informal that hostess and guests wait on themselves.
With the cup and saucer there may be offered a plate, and some hostesses offer doilies as well, but this is not obligatory. The maid is chiefly needed to replenish the hot water, to take away empty cups and the like, and if she is within sound of the bell, it answers as well as though she were at the elbow of the hostess.
When the tea is to be a larger and more formal function, matters are differently arranged. In those cases where a hostess gives perhaps two days, and invites all her dear five hundred friends to be present at one or the other of them, there is not room in the drawing-room for the tea-table nor place for the chatty informality of the simpler afternoon tea. The table is laid in the dining-room, or the library, and a friend is invited to “pour.” If there are two beverages,—as there are, almost invariably,—one friend takes each end of the table, and there may be even a third, presiding over another hot drink, or over the punch bowl. A waitress or two must be at hand to take away the dishes that have been used and bring fresh, and to see that the guests have enough to eat and drink. The hostess has no time to see to anything beyond the salutations of the guests as they come in, and can only suggest to them that they go out to the dining-room and find something to eat.
Once in a while, a hostess will give no more than is contained in the menus already suggested, except that the supplies of all kinds may be increased, and that there may be three kinds of sandwiches, instead of one or two, and a larger choice in the matter of cake. Two hot drinks, at least, must be supplied.
But in so large a function the bill of fare is more likely to be something like the following:
AFTERNOON TEA MENU. III
Bouillon
Lobster Sandwiches Chicken Truffle Sandwiches
Lettuce Sandwiches
Salted Almonds Olives Bonbons Cakes
Tea Coffee
Chocolate, or Claret Punch
When an afternoon tea gets to this stage it may still be called “a tea,” but it has gone far beyond that, and has become a daytime reception. Even if the sun is shining outside there is usually artificial light in the rooms. The lamps are burning with a pleasant subdued light, there are candles with colored shades, the women who are receiving and presiding over the table are in full dress. The table itself is beautiful with china and cut glass and silver. Flowers are about everywhere, and except that the men are in morning dress and the women guests in street costume, it might be an evening party.
There is a reception held in the afternoon that is even more elaborate than this. When a woman wants to make signal some special “occasion,”—to honor a guest, or perhaps because it is the only “crush” she gives in the year,—she often makes it a tea. For this the cards will be out ten days or more in advance and the refreshments provided are more elegant and numerous than those mentioned above. Such a collation might be as follows: