Q. We recently stayed for a Saturday night with an old friend and were warned before we arrived that my husband’s carer would not be able to join us for dinner as that would make us 13 around the table. We are devoted to our carer and feel that his exclusion was much more to do with snobbery than superstition. For the rest of our stay, our host seemed to find him perfectly agreeable company and we wonder whether, in retrospect, he regretted the exclusion. Should we have insisted he join us, Mary? And do you agree that no sophisticated person could take this superstition seriously?
— B.T., London SW5
A. Even if the superstition was a pretext, your host had the right to exclude the carer — not on snobbish grounds but because conversation is stymied if one person at the table does not know the names being bandied. Franklin D.
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