"How will you have your coffee, Mr. Dawson?" Miss Liz presently asked—for dinner at the Colonel's was of the farm variety which scorned the demitasse.
"A mite of long sweetenin', please Ma'm," he answered to that lady's utter consternation. She laid down the tongs and stared at him.
"He'll take it as you fix Bob's, Miss Liz," Jane interposed readily enough to save the situation, and at the next opportunity she turned in a confidential undertone: "We don't use 'long sweetening' down here, Dale. People in the valleys use sugar exclusively—'short sweetening,' as you call it. They don't have to grind and stew up corn-stalks to get sorghum for their coffee, as we used to do. But I remember how good that molasses—that 'long sweetening'—was," she added, lying for the benefit of charity. "Don't forget, they use 'short sweetening' all the time here in coffee, but they never call it anything but sugar. While on the subject of customs I want to correct you about something else. Today, over home, you stood in the drive and halloed for Bob till he came out for you. That isn't done in the settlements. Here you can walk right up to anybody's front door and knock, or ring the bell, without the slightest fear of having a rifle poked through a chink because people may take you for an enemy. Of course, your way is the proper and polite thing to do where we come from, but in the valley it isn't good etiquette."
"What's etiquette?" he asked.
She explained it and continued:
"The etiquette of knives and forks and spoons also materially differs between our people and these."
"I never seed one of these little fellers before," he picked up a teaspoon and turned it curiously over.
"I didn't either," she laughed, "until I went to the convent. But now, since I'm to be your teacher, you must let me teach you these things, too."
"I want ye to teach me everything in the world," he whispered.
"Then watch how I use them," she replied, flushing at the way he said this, "and which ones I use. Down here, people who eat with their knives are murdered—I mean socially murdered. Break—" she was about to say: break all the commandments before doing this! but thought better of it and added: "yourself of that habit the very first—the very first thing you do. And I want to hear more of that good English you say you know," she laughed at him. "You've been talking atrociously all day!"