DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is there a polite way for a single, middle-aged lady to let a single, middle-aged gentleman know that she would like to be more than a dear family friend? (There are no impediments save some geographic distance.)

How can she let this be known without putting the gentleman into a potentially embarrassing position, and possibly ruining a close and wonderful friendship should he not harbor like feelings?

The lady occasionally has to travel on business to the gentleman's home city, where she has no other acquaintance. Should she continue to suggest getting together on those occasions? And how may she properly invite him for a visit to her hometown? What cues or clues should she be alert for either that he is or is not interested?

GENTLE READER: Is Miss Manners safe in assuming that you are not of the generation that demands outright, "I don't want to waste my time, so are you interested or not?"

Besides being romantically chilling, this horrid technique precludes the deniability you need to keep from forfeiting the friendship (or your dignity). More subtle means are required. Besides, those are more exciting.

You can certainly visit and invite the gentleman at a friendly pace, but his availability will only tell you whether he wishes to continue that friendship. To progress, you need to send a few ambiguous signals. Whether he responds in kind will give you your answer, while still allowing you deniability should he not do so.

For example, you stare at him too long and soulfully, and then look away as if you had hardly known what you were doing. You sit too close to him, and then idly get up and sit somewhere else. You brush up against him as if you had not noticed that you did.

Oh, stop pretending to be shocked at Miss Manners' knowing such things. Before the world turned as crude as it is now, flirting was a common and innocent practice.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been dating my boyfriend for four months and it came up this week that he still does not know my name. I do not know what to do about this because he has heard my name so many times, both my English name and my Italian name. I also write it on everything I have given to him, yet he still calls me by the wrong name.

He will blame it on his disabilities, yet he knows all of his co-workers first and last names, even the most recent workers. He tells me he has all of these feelings for me and really cares about me but I feel, "You can give the world to someone, but if you don't know who you are giving it to, it's just not worth it."

GENTLE READER: As much sympathy as Miss Manners has for bad memories and disabilities, she has to break it to you that a gentleman's inability to learn the name of a lady he has been courting for four months is not a good sign. You might consider impressing it upon him with a letter of farewell.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: What's the proper etiquette regarding gift-giving between lovers? I was confused, so I gave him one anyway, but I probably won't be getting one from him. I just don't want him to be obligated to give me one just because I gave.

GENTLE READER: Of course you don't. You want him to have the same spontaneous impulse you did, to give you a present for the pure pleasure of doing so, not just to reciprocate.

And just how is he going to manage that?

With your forbearance, Miss Manners suggests. First, you must refrain from saying, "Don't think you have to get me anything." Then, if he gets you something, you must refrain from saying, "You didn't have to."

But -- this is the hardest part -- if he does not, you mustn't sulk. Waiting for the next occasion gives him a chance to seem spontaneous. Waiting forever gives you a chance to consider whether spontaneity couldn't benefit from being asked, on the next occasion but one, whether or not he thinks "we ought" to exchange presents.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A coworker generously opened his home to a family displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He attends a church, and the congregation raised funds to defray some of the expense.

The guest family is of another religion. They stayed with him for several weeks. The congregation asked the family, now settled and working, to attend a church service and, apparently, formally thank the givers, who feel that they made sacrifices and that the family should be willing to sacrifice their time and overcome their discomfort with the religion, and grant the request. After postponing and hesitating a couple of times, the family flat declined.

The congregation thinks the service is the only time they are all together, and so the meeting should be at the service. The family now thinks and says that the whole project was a proselytizing venture. There is resentment on both sides.

As I heard this develop, the original gift of hospitality was really disinterested. How do you read this? I thought it wrong in general to ask for a public display of gratitude, but of course they don't frame it quite like that. What might have been a better course once the hospitality and gift money were given? I suppose the family should just attend, but do you see some validity to their objections?

GENTLE READER: What a heartbreaking example this is of good intentions not being enough if they come without the manners to make the good intentions clear.

Miss Manners does not doubt the goodness of your coworker and those who enabled him to help the displaced family. She also trusts that the hurricane victims are not monsters of ingratitude (or the host family would have become well aware of this during the visit).

But charity to individuals requires particular delicacy in preserving their dignity. However the invitation was framed, you, at least, picked up on the fact that it was a summons to perform a public display of gratitude, which, as you note, is rude. Obviously, the family caught that, too. For them, it also seemed to require that they participate in church services.

This does not excuse their merely refusing. They do owe gratitude, and they could have responded that they would very much like to thank the congregation, but preferred to do so after services.

The problem would have been averted if only the congregation had really framed the request tactfully. "Our congregation would like to meet you, as we naturally take an interest in your welfare," it might have said in effect. An invitation to meet people after services would have left the family with the option of attending services as observers and the ability to thank the congregation in the dignified position of guests, rather than as ingrates who had to be nudged to behave.

Miss Manners can't bear to leave it at that. She urges you to request one more act of charity from your congregation. This would be a letter to the family, apologizing that its invitation was awkwardly put, and assuring the family that there was no intention of proselytizing, but that people who had taken an interest in them simply wanted to meet them.

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