Every one looked disconcerted.
There was silence for a moment.

I was very much ashamed.
"Oh, no," she said at last.

"When I said 'you-all' I meant you and Mr.
Morgan." (She pronounced it "Moh-gan," with a lovely drawl.) As she made this statement, she blushed, poor lady! Being to blame for her discomfiture, I could not bear to see her blush, and looked away, but only to catch the eye of my companion, and to read in its evil gleam the thought: "Of course they use it in the singular.
But aren't you ashamed of having tripped up such a pretty creature on a point of dialect ?" Though my interest in the southern idiom had caused me to forget about the sugar, my hostess had not forgotten.
"Well," she said, still balancing the lump above the cup, and continuing gamely to put the question in the same form, and to me: "Do you-all take sugah, oh not ?" I had no idea how my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly--or at least demi-tacitly--accede to the alleged plural intent of the question.
Therefore, I replied: "Mr.Morgan takes two lumps.

I don't take any, thanks." Late that night as we were returning to our hotel, my companion said to me somewhat tartly: "In case such a thing comes up again, I wish you would remember that sugar in my coffee makes me ill." "Well, why didn't you say so ?" "Because," he returned, "I thought that you-all ought to do the answering.

It seemed best for me-all to keep quiet and try to look plural under the singular conditions." * * * * * No single thing I ever wrote has brought to me so many letters, nor letters so uniform in sentiment (albeit widely different in expression), as the foregoing, seemingly unimportant tale, printed originally in "Collier's Weekly." Some one has pointed out that various communities have "fighting words," and as the letters poured in I began to realize that in discussing "you-all" I had inadvertently hit upon a term which aroused the ire of the South--or rather, that I had aroused ire by implying that the expression is sometimes used in the singular--the Solid South to the contrary notwithstanding.
Never, upon any subject, have I known people to agree as my southern correspondents did on this.