“Same here,” put in the Mixer, saturating half a slice of bread in the sauce of the stew. “I can’t afford to act otherwise than like I am a lady at one of them dinners, but the minute I’m home I beat it for the icebox. I suppose it’s all right to be socially elegant, but we hadn’t ought to let it contaminate our food none. And even at that New York hotel this summer you had to make trouble to get fed proper. I wanted strawberry shortcake, and what do you reckon they dealt me? A thing looking like a marble palace--sponge cake and whipped cream with a few red spots in between. Well, long as we’re friends here together, I may say that I raised hell until I had the chef himself up and told him exactly what to do; biscuit dough baked and prized apart and buttered, strawberries with sugar on ‘em in between and on top, and plenty of regular cream. Well, after three days’ trying he finally managed to get simple--he just couldn’t believe I meant it at first, and kept building on the whipped cream--and the thing cost eight dollars, but you can bet he had me, even then; the bonehead smarty had sweetened the cream and grated nutmeg into it. I give up. “And if you can’t get right food in New York, how can you expect to here? And Jackson, the idiot, has just fired the only real cook in Red Gap. Yes, sir; he’s let the coons go. It come out that Waterman had sneaked out that suit of his golf clothes that Kate Kenner wore in the minstrel show, so he fired them both, and now I got to support ‘em, because, as long as we’re friends here, I don’t mind telling you I egged the coon on to do it.” I saw that she was referring to the black and his wife whom I had met at the New York camp, though it seemed quaint to me that they should be called “coons,” which is, I take it, a diminutive for “raccoon,” a species of ground game to be found in America. Truth to tell, I enjoyed myself immensely at this simple but satisfying meal, feeling myself one with these homely people, and I was sorry when we had finished. “That was some little dinner itself,” said the Mixer as she rolled a cigarette; “and now you boys set still while I do up the dishes.” Nor would she allow either of us to assist her in this work. When she had done, Cousin Egbert proceeded to mix hot toddies from the whiskey, and we gathered about the table before the open fire. “Now we’ll have a nice home evening,” said the Mixer, and to my great embarrassment she began at once to speak to myself. “A strong man like him has got no business becoming a social butterfly,” she remarked to Cousin Egbert. “Oh, Bill’s all right,” insisted the latter, as he had done so many times before. “He’s all right so far, but let him go on for a year or so and he won’t be a darned bit better than what Jackson is, mark my words. Just a social butterfly, wearing funny clothes and attending afternoon affairs.”