DEAR MISS MANNERS: Several years ago, I was fortunate to be able to purchase a vacation home on the beach. I enjoy inviting my friends to visit.

However, over time, many of them have begun to be quite presumptuous, to the point where I'm beginning to feel used. One friend left her bathing suits in my guest bedroom for the next time she comes to visit; one wrote his name on a bottle of bourbon and left it behind my bar; one invited a friend that I did not know to stay with her; one even asked me for his own key so he could stay there when I wasn't home!

How can I convey to these people that, while I enjoy having them as my guests, this is, in fact, my home and not a time-share?

GENTLE READER: Drink the bourbon, mail back the bathing suits, and keep a tight grip on your invitations and your keys. Should any explanation seem necessary, it should be 1) "Thank you"; 2) "I can't store things here"; 3) "I'm sorry, but I can't accommodate your friend"; and 4) "I don't know you well enough to exchange keys with you, and I doubt that I would have occasion to occupy your house."

Oh, and Miss Manners doesn't want you using the gracious expression "My house is your house" until you have a better class of friends.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the best way of shutting up a friend who has the cringe-making, crass habit of trying to pull rank, sometimes in casual conversation with complete strangers, by declaring: "I'm a doctor's daughter"? I really wish this pomposity had been beaten out of her in the school playground and I don't understand why it wasn't, but as we're not in the school playground anymore, what can I do?

She uses this line to justify, and indeed advise, such activities as eating moldy food, driving after a couple of glasses of wine and walking across tick-infested countryside with bare legs: "Lyme disease isn't a problem for anyone with a healthy immune system. I'm a doctor's daughter."

It's bloody annoying, but what, if any, is her offence against etiquette? Even if she hasn't committed one, how do I make her shut up?

Her father the doctor is dead so it's impossible to know what he actually said. Should I try "I think you must have forgotten"? Even if she isn't talking rubbish, which she usually is, and even if she isn't talking to me, that phrase "I'm a doctor's daughter" makes my skin crawl with embarrassment. "My father was a research chemist." Could that help?

GENTLE READER: Help with what? Memorizing the table of the elements? Explaining the properties of the contents of the medicine cabinet?

Wait, you have the doctor's daughter to do that.

It is hard to say exactly what her etiquette violation is -- some combination of brag-and-bore -- but easy to see that it is annoying. Miss Manners would respond to the reference to the lady's father by saying nicely, "He probably had a license to practice medicine."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: We have two small sets of silver, one containing about six place settings, and the other four. Since we are young and do not have complete sets of all the nice things, we do not host formal meals.

Is it all right if we use both sets of silver at the same meal for an informal dinner with more than six people attending? Would the same apply to mismatching dinnerware or glassware?

Everything we have is a happy potluck of whatever was lovingly passed down to us on the occasion of our wedding, matching or not. We are proud of it, but the impression we receive from etiquette literature is that there is something inappropriate about a non-matching table.

GENTLE READER: "Etiquette literature"? Miss Manners assures you that the only legitimate requirements of etiquette in regard to table setting are that you provide whatever equipment is needed to eat the food being served, and that you attempt to make the setting aesthetically pleasing.

What is aesthetically pleasing is another matter. Some believe that can only mean matching sets. Others find it more interesting and creative to mix patterns.

But wait. There is also a subtext, which allows you to pick your snobbery. One kind holds that matching sets indicate that you can afford to buy what you use. The other holds that unmatched items indicate that you are not, as the British disdainfully say, "the sort of people who buy their silver," but whose who inherit it.

Naturally, Miss Manners abhors all forms of snobbery. But you need not be intimidated by the former kind, since it is trumped by the latter.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm very young, in college, have a major that I really enjoy, and like filling my schedule up with hobbies and activities that make me happy. For some reason, though, people have taken a huge interest in my (lack of) love life.

One person keeps asking me if I am "happy" even though I am single. I enjoy life and love learning about my classes and quite frankly do not want to date because it would take time away from my studies.

What is a polite way to tell people to mind their own business and just because I chose to be single does not, in any way, make me less happy than them?

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." I feel like I am letting people talk down to me, but then again feel like I am overreacting. I'm just looking for one of your quick quips to get people to stop bothering me.

GENTLE READER: "You're so kind to worry about my private life. But I assure you that your worry is misplaced."

It's not a quip, Miss Manners admits, but then, people do not find it funny to be told to mind their own business. This makes the point about your life being private and, for good measure, leaves them with thwarted curiosity about whether your life is happy because you are mated or because you are not.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am unsure of how to react to my co-workers' spiteful comments whenever I choose to spend my paid/personal time off (PTO). I am a single male, under 25 and don't have children.

The most common comment that I hear is an extremely sarcastic "Must be nice!" -- as if I am the sole person upon this planet to earn PTO.

These comments have only come from co-workers that have children. What is the proper response to these immature comments?

It is not my fault that someone chose to have a child. When these people receive their tax returns, I certainly do not make rude comments about how it "must be nice" to receive an $8,000 tax return simply for having children (the individuals I am referring to also have no qualms about openly discussing how they spend these funds on material items such as cars, televisions, etc.). Frankly, I have too much class than to behave in such a way.

I am extremely respectful and conservative in most situations, but hypocrisy will make my blood boil. I obviously cannot obliterate their faulty logic with a brutal one-liner, since I'm at work. What should I do?

GENTLE READER: Spiteful hypocrisy that makes your blood boil? Miss Manners is afraid that you have a very low boiling point. This is what passes as office humor. Please do not escalate it to brutal. There is enough unemployment as it is.

However, if you will settle for being merely annoying in return, you need only agree with your tormentors, oops, colleagues. As you leave, just call out, "Ah, yes, the life of the carefree bachelor! Have fun working!"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We attended two weddings that were at least a nine- and 13-hour drive away. One was on an island. These families are our very close friends.

We were not invited to the rehearsal dinners. As we were coming into town for the second wedding, we did get a call to come on over to the rehearsal dinner (it had already begun) but we were too far away and could not make it. We were surprised by our friends. They are not poor.

GENTLE READER: You were not in the rehearsals, were you? So why are you hurt at not being asked to the rehearsal dinners?

Yes, Miss Manners knows that you came a long way and that you know that there were rehearsal guests who were not in the rehearsal, either. The name of that event hangs on, even though it is now more often a catch-all for relatives, out-of-towners and such.

Well, apparently not a catch-all for all this time.

However, you cannot quite presume that a wedding invitation is always good for two days. Instead of suggesting that the idea was to save money (although the fact that they were not poor before paying the wedding bills doesn't mean they are not poor now), it would be kinder to assume that the rehearsal dinner was a rehearsal dinner.

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