DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I have very different views on what is a proper amount of time to stay after dinner when we are dinner guests in someone's home.

He wants to leave shortly after eating because he is uncomfortable, and I think it is rude to appear to "eat and run." However, we both agree that we don't know what a proper interval should be and how to leave without appearing rude or ungracious.

GENTLE READER: Why is your husband uncomfortable after eating? Should he be consulting his tailor about that?

If you are merely talking about the discomfort of having to hang around with people of whom he is beginning to tire, he is out of luck. Miss Manners is afraid that dinner guests must linger a bit rather than reveal that they came only for the eats.

"A bit" is more easily defined when the hosts serve coffee in the living room. It takes perhaps half an hour to serve and drink the coffee, after which you are free to go. When stranded at the table after the meal is long finished, it is necessary to ascertain that no relocation is planned, so it may take somewhat longer.

Not too much longer, however. You don't want the hosts to begin to think that the guests came not just for the meal, but for the duration.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My employer has offered to pay for tickets to a public event for each employee, his or her spouse, and his or her children, but has made it clear that others the employee wishes to invite will be at the employee's expense. Since the event does not interest me, I had previously stated my intention not to attend.

However, a fellow employee has asked me to register, fraudulently, to attend the event, so that, apparently, when I fail to appear, the person in question can use my (ill-gotten) ticket for someone who does not meet the specified criteria. I suppressed, perhaps wrongly, my initial reaction, which would have been a somewhat indignant, possibly loud, "Excuse me?! You are asking me to steal from our employer on your behalf?!"

An alternative I am considering is to conveniently "forget" to register so that the fellow employee can be left in the position of paying at the gate. However, this person will likely follow up with me before the event, as my having failed to register will be on a viewable database.

Can you provide me an appropriate response? In the course of my continued employment, I must interact with this person, so I am at a loss as to what to say. Also, I'm baffled as to why this person would think I would comply, as I do not, I believe, give the impression of being larcenous.

GENTLE READER: Nor should you give the impression that your colleague is larcenous. Suppressing your initial reaction was a really good idea.

The approach Miss Manners favors is to assume that your colleague acted out of mistaken goodwill. You can then kindly explain, "Oh, I don't think that's what Mr. Boss meant when he was so generous. But I'll ask him, and if it's all right with him, I'd be glad to."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I just came home from three days in a hospital to replace a knee. I wore only a hospital gown, open at the back and (for a tall man like me) barely covering the pubic area. A book for hospital patients explained that this is necessary for medical measurements and procedures and particularly for emergencies.

Often, during manipulations and exercises, the gown gave no protection at all. As the nudity was appropriate in the situation and the staff was professional, I did not feel at all uncomfortable. The book said (though the hospital staff never mentioned the matter) that at some point during the hospital stay, when the immediate danger was over, a patient who did feel uncomfortable could request additional clothing. I never did, especially since it was difficult moving to the bathroom and the gown made other arrangements easier.

But on the third day, the physical therapist, a woman, looked away as she worked with me, and I wondered: Do good manners require a male patient to wear pants when possible out of consideration for the overwhelmingly female hospital staff?

GENTLE READER: Good manners require that both patient and hospital staff pretend that there is nothing personal about the naked human body -- that it is merely a biological specimen that one of them happens to inhabit and the other is trying to fix. Etiquette is full of such injunctions against taking notice of the obvious, Miss Manners is proud to say.

However, patients are less practiced in maintaining this particular fiction, which is why the hospital was willing to admit that some of them might not want to snuggle up in that indecent garment they call a hospital gown longer than strictly necessary.

But in your case, it seems to have been the therapist who blinked. Had she visited you in your home, she would have been right to be alarmed. To find a hospital patient wearing -- or trying to wear; Miss Manners assumes you did not intend to flash the lady -- a hospital gown in a hospital room ought not to have startled her. Steadfastly maintaining the convention by refusing to notice that she had noticed would be preferable at this point to your also abandoning the convention. At the same time, and while maintaining an aloof expression, you should be looking for an opportunity to cover up as best you can.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Last week I flew on a red-eye that left Lima at midnight and arrived in Atlanta at 8 a.m. I was in an interesting conversation with a charming Peruvian when the gentleman in front of her turned around and asked us to keep quiet, as he was trying to sleep.

Since I didn't want to end the conversation, I offered him some earplugs. He declined and stalked off in a huff. Fortunately, there was an empty seat to which he repaired.

Now, if this were a theater, he would be perfectly correct in asking for quiet. If it were a daylight flight, I would be perfectly correct in refusing. But this is a grey -- or red-eye -- area, which only Miss Manners can adjudicate.

GENTLE READER: It is a red-eye matter, Miss Manners is afraid. After-hours in an airplane are considered beddy-bye time, however much the scanty seats and pillows make this into a mockery, and voices should be kept to a whisper.

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Disparaging tourists is such a popular summer pastime that even tourists who are in the very act of touring like to have a go at it. "This place is overrun with tourists," they will say in disgusted tones. And there are more of them than they think, because they fail to count themselves.

If this amuses them Miss Manners is not one to interfere, provided they do not insult their fellow tourists to their faces. But she has noticed that this disparagement of their own kind suggests a way of thinking that is likely to lead to post-holiday etiquette problems for all who travel.

When the residents of a tourist attraction criticize tourists, it is for such crimes as crowding and littering the area, dressing as if cities were beaches and supporting the local economy. (No, wait. That last one isn't quite it. It is for supporting the local economy by buying souvenirs and snacks instead of patronizing sensible businesses that sell things real people need, such as lawnmowers, dishcloths and stepladders.)

But when tourists criticize one another, it is for not enjoying themselves. This does not mean getting in the way of their critics' enjoying themselves, although there is an element of that. The charge is, uncharitably enough, that other tourists are not enjoying their own vacations.

"Look at them," they will say of one another. "They have no real interest in being here. They don't even know what they're seeing. They don't care. All they want is to be able to brag to their friends at home that they've been here. That's why they're taking pictures all the time and sending all those postcards. It's just to prove that they've been here."

Backpackers and those in hotel suites say this of one another. People visiting a place for the second time say it of people visiting for the first time. And everyone says it of people traveling on tours -- especially the other people who are on their tours.

What worries Miss Manners is that they thus plant in themselves the extraordinary notion that telling people at home about one's trip is a real and desirable possibility -- that it is so much of one that huge numbers of people invest the better part of their disposable time and money in setting up what Miss Manners can tell them will be a social disaster.

Nobody wants to hear about anyone else's trip. The only thing they dread more is looking at the pictures from such trips. Here is the conversation family and friends want to have with the returning tourist:

"Have a good trip?"

"Yes, it was great."

"Good weather?"

"Well, it rained one day, but we were going to museums then anyway."

"OK, then. Good to have you back."

Of course, the tourist who did have a great trip is bursting with things to say and show. For that, it is no use to corner those alleged folks back home who are supposed to be impressed. The only people who genuinely want to listen are those who have been there themselves or are planning to go, and the tradeoff is that they expect equal time to tell of their adventures and impressions.

Tourists should therefore treasure other tourists. They are the only ones who will want to listen to them.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I love red wine, but it always leaves an unsightly stain on my lips and teeth. This makes me hesitant to drink it in public, because whenever I smile I'd reveal a mouthful of purple teeth. Is there a way to drink red wine without turning one's mouth purple?

GENTLE READER: Quick! Somebody run and get the soda water! You could, ah, gargle with it. Well, no. Good thing this isn't the household-hints department.

Not that etiquette will be much help after the fact. Miss Manners can only tell you what it says you can't do. You can't ask for a straw. You can't whip out a mirror and inspect yourself. You shouldn't even try using a knife blade as a mirror (as one Gentle Reader once suggested) because it is not polite to brandish knives around during dinner.

So she suggests that you learn to drink by putting the lower rim of the glass beyond your lower lip and raising your upper lip and teeth out of the way. However, if you cannot manage this without looking as if you are gargling, Miss Manners recommends drinking milk.

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