“But the real joy of that feast was that Miss Sterling. Just a little trick she was, not bigger than two bits’ worth of chewing plug; but she had a way about her that seemed to say she was the people, and you believed it. And yet, she never put on any airs, and she smiled at me the same as if I was a millionaire while I was telling about a Creek dog feast and listened like it was news from home.
“By and by, after we had eat oysters and some watery soup and truck that never was in my repertory, a Methodist preacher brings in a kind of camp stove arrangement, all silver, on long legs, with a lamp under it.
“Miss Sterling lights up and begins to do some cooking right on the supper table. I wondered why old man Sterling didn’t hire a cook, with all the money he had. Pretty soon she dished out some cheesy tasting truck that she said was rabbit, but I swear there had never been a Molly cotton tail in a mile of it.
“The last thing on the programme was lemonade. It was brought around in little flat glass bowls and set by your plate. I was pretty thirsty, and I picked up mine and took a big swig of it. Right there was where the little lady had made a mistake. She had put in the lemon all right, but she’d forgot the sugar. The best housekeepers slip up sometimes. I thought maybe Miss Sterling was just learning to keep house and cook—that rabbit would surely make you think so—and I says to myself, ‘Little lady, sugar or no sugar I’ll stand by you,’ and I raises up my bowl again and drinks the last drop of the lemonade. And then all the balance of ’em picks up their bowls and does the same. And then I gives Miss Sterling the laugh proper, just to carry it off like a joke, so she wouldn’t feel bad about the mistake.
“After we all went into the sitting room she sat down and talked to me quite awhile.
“‘It was so kind of you, Mr. Kingsbury,’ says she, ‘to bring my blunder off so nicely. It was so stupid of me to forget the sugar.’
“‘Never you mind,’ says I, ‘some lucky man will throw his rope over a mighty elegant little housekeeper some day, not far from here.’
“‘If you mean me, Mr. Kingsbury,’ says she, laughing out loud, ‘I hope he will be as lenient with my poor housekeeping as you have been.’
“‘Don’t mention it,’ says I. ‘Anything to oblige the ladies.’”
Bud ceased his reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he considered the most striking and prominent trait of New Yorkers.