It is very funny how different sections of the country establish their aristocracy by the way certain favorite dishes are served. I heard a lady from Plymouth, Massachusetts, say once that some of her townsmen were not really very good people; they put too much molasses in their baked beans. I am sure a South Carolinian would consider any one po' white trash who liked rice cooked mushy and not dry with every grain standing out like a pearl. Certainly anywhere in the South sugar in the cornbread would label any family as not to the manor-born, while in the North sugar in the cornbread is a regular thing, born or not born.
Everything was delicious on that table, and the hostesses quite warmed up into a pleasant glow of hospitality. It is difficult to be stiff, even if you have swallowed a heredity poker, when gay, happy, hungry young people are at your board, showing their appreciation of your culinary skill by devouring everything handed to them.
Dilsey waited on table as though it had been set on ploughed ground, every now and then almost falling down in an imaginary furrow. The Misses Laurens completely ignored her awkwardness, although in all probability, being human, they were in agony for fear she would shoot the rolls across the room, or pour the coffee down a guest's back or do something else equally trying. Dilsey seemed delighted with her prowess, and every time she safely landed some article of food to the destination to which her mistresses had sent it, she gave a pleased cluck. She would come up to you and lean over your shoulder in a really most engaging manner, and say:
"Now do hab a lil' mo' 'sarves! Try dem quinches dis time."
She was especially lively with the "graby," and handed it every time there was a lull in operations. Professor Green refused it so often that it really became embarrassing, but still the girl persisted in her endeavors. "Jes' lil' graby on yo' rice!" Finally Miss Arabella interfered to prevent further persecution, and this is where Professor Green "broke his 'lasses pitcher" with the Misses Laurens.
"Perhaps you do not care for gravy," she suggested. "Won't you have some butter on your rice? The butter to Professor Green, Dilsey."
"Thank you, no butter! I should like some sugar and cream on my rice, however. I am very fond of it that way."
"Sugar and cream! On rice!" came in gasps from both ladies.
Oh, ye gods and little fishes! What had our masculine contingent done? Flown in the face of customs older than Time! Dilsey's awkward waiting, taking boarders, nothing had upset the well-bred equanimity of these descendants of ancestors like this awful alien fact. "Sugar on rice! Cream on rice! The Yankees are upon us! Hide the spoons!" That was the manner they had when almost tearfully they instructed Dilsey to pass the rice, pass the sugar and cream.
The professor ate it with about as much relish as Proserpine must have eaten the dried-up pomegranate that Pluto obtained for her. He knew he had done something terrible, but, man-like, he did not know just exactly what it was. He knew that rice and sugar and cream were mixed up in it, but how? Had he realized as I did that his request for a peculiar combination of food had lost him the bet, perhaps it would have choked him outright. It was a difficult feat to accomplish at best, to tackle these old aristocrats on the subject of remuneration, but now that he had done such a terribly plebeian thing as to want his rice mushy and sweet, there was no possible way to get back in their good graces, certainly no quick way of doing it. A reconstruction period would have to be gone through with and then after much burying of many hatchets perhaps cordial relations could be re-established.