He was not slow to accept the invitation, and did ample justice to the viands, praising them without stint as he ate.
"You're the best cook in the county, by all odds, Mrs. Baird; but the Ohio ladies are very apt to understand the business; I don't believe there's a State in the Union can beat Ohio at that."
"I agree with you there, sir," remarked Rupert. "But I have observed that a man is very apt to think nobody else's cooking quite equal to that of his own mother—a fact partly to be accounted for by the other, that children's appetites are usually keen and their digestion good. There is a great deal of truth in the old saying that hunger is the best sauce."
"Was your mother a native of Ohio, Mr. Keith?" asked Mrs. Baird, with a look of interest.
"Yes, madam, my father also; all their children were born there too, so that we are a family of Buckeyes," he concluded, with sportive look and tone.
"I thought so!" she exclaimed emphatically; "the first hour you were in the house I said to myself, I shouldn't wonder if he were from my own State of Ohio."
"But I thought I heard you say you came from Indiana, Mr. Keith," spoke up Ralph.
"So I did," returned Rupert, pleasantly; "we removed to that State some years ago."
"Fine States both," remarked Mr. Clark. "I've lived in both, and ought to know. Now confess, Mrs. Baird, that you are wondering what brought me here to-day."
"To be ready for preaching to-morrow, I presume," she answered dryly; "but why should I be wondering more than the rest?"