DEAR MISS MANNERS: My father died after a short illness. Almost immediately after the funeral, people started coming to the door saying, basically, "Gee, I'm sorry your Dad died. By the way, he promised me that I could have (item or property) someday. Can I have it now?"

My mother, siblings and I are frankly flabbergasted that people would do this in the midst of our mourning. (Dad died less than a month ago.) We are also shocked at the sheer number of people who are doing this. One person even tried to bully my mother into giving him something he said he was promised well over a decade ago!

Until now, we have been fixing people with an icy look and a message that nothing is being given away unless my mother decides to do so (delivered in a flat tone.) You would not believe the number of people who come back the next day asking if Mom has had a chance to make her decision yet!

We would like the begging to stop, but we don't want to escalate the rudeness since many of the people coming around asking for things are her neighbors. The situation is just too raw for us to think about giving away my father's things.

Can you help us with something to say that will convey the message without confrontation, please? We think that some of these people really don't realize what they are doing and we don't want them to feel like idiots, but this situation must stop, if only for my mother's sake.

GENTLE READER: Why are you flattering these people by characterizing them as idiots who do not realize what they are doing?

It seems to Miss Manners that they know exactly what they are doing: taking advantage of a bereaved family by attempting to cozen them with the smarmy tactic of invoking the wishes of the deceased.

Perhaps your father did offer to give things away, although Miss Manners is suspicious of these claims. His illness was short, and it seems unlikely that he spent it making such promises. If he did, surely you would have known about it.

In addition to the disposition of property he made in his will, you will probably honor any wishes he may have expressed to the family informally. But if you want to do anything beyond that, you -- the family -- are the best ones to guess what would have pleased him.

However, even Miss Manners can tell you what would go against his wishes. He would not have wished to reward people who harassed his widow and children.

What you should say to them is, "We appreciate your kind wishes. We have his will, and we know his most recent intentions, so if there is anything coming to you, you will hear from us or from his lawyer. Thank you for stopping by."

The opening and closing sentences here are designed, Miss Manners must confess, to make these people realize their rudeness. But in a polite way, of course.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it proper to send a birthday gift of a food nature to someone's office?

GENTLE READER-- Is it meant to be shared? Because it will be. In the history of the world, Miss Manners assures you, no one has successfully managed to escape from a world place with a box of chocolates intact. It is therefore more sensible, as well as more personal, to send it to the person's home.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My nephew and I were having a discussion regarding eating ice cream at a business dinner. Is it considered bad manners to stir your ice cream until it is almost liquefied?

GENTLE READER: Smushing ice cream is a private pleasure. Miss Manners does not advise it at business dinners unless the desired impression is one of childish impatience. Does your nephew not know that dignified patience will have the same effect on his ice cream?

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: What do you do when you take a bite of something, say meat, and it's all bones or fat and you need to get it out of your mouth?

Discreetly put your napkin to your mouth and hide it in there? Maybe this sounds ridiculous, but I've been in that situation and I always hope I'm being inconspicuous!

GENTLE READER-- No, sorry: We all noticed the white flag you raised.

In addition to being ineffective, the napkin disguise is condemned by etiquette as a "genteelism" -- a ploy that draws unwarranted attention to its own fastidiousness. Miss Manners assures you that etiquette knows how to be straightforward when necessary.

The simple rule is that inedible food comes out the way it went in. Meat would have arrived by fork, and therefore it is deposited back on the fork for the return trip. But if you are eating something by hand, for example a grape that turns out to have a seed, you deposit the seed back into your cupped hand. Noiselessly. Etiquette is legitimately fastidious about that.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I were acquaintances with our neighbors before we moved -- we would have dinner a couple times a year and would see them on the street regularly. They attended our wedding.

They are our parents' age, and our original motivation to get together was just to be neighborly. They have an interesting relationship -- filled with angst and anger that was expressed openly in front of us -- so we made sure not to see them too often.

My sister and her husband now live in our old place and the neighbor went out of her way to make some rude comments to my sister while my sister was in the middle of a tennis game: "Are you pregnant? Thank god (you're not). Well, you should work out more," etc.

For whatever reason, these comments were meant to be hurtful as it is the neighbor's personality to be so.

Since then, my husband and I have ignored the neighbors' attempted requests to get together. In our limited free time, I don't want to pretend to be friendly with someone so purposely hurtful.

However, the neighbor has not gotten the message, and I feel that in order for me to do the right thing, I may owe her some sort of explanation or response.

My sister doesn't want me to say anything because she runs into the neighbors occasionally, and she's afraid it may make their life more difficult. (It is a condo community, and he is president of the board.) What is the polite way for me to handle this situation?

GENTLE READER: Your suggestion seems to be to solve a minor problem for yourself by creating a major problem for your sister. This could lead to your own major problem with your sister.

Why must you explain? The way to drop acquaintances is to keep being too busy to have time for them until they give up. It is annoying when that takes a long time, as it evidently does here, but not much of a burden compared to living near antagonized neighbors.

No good ever comes of telling people why you don't like them. And Miss Manners notices that you waited to propose leveling with them until you moved safely away. Please refrain from creating an unsafe environment for your sister.

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