Two heavily woven split baskets, bigger than bushel baskets, considerably, were filled with brownish, greenish things that seemed to move—but of course they couldn't—but they did, they surely did. Moved slowly but crawlingly like great spiders—
"Ugh!" shivered Mary Jane, "whatever are they?"
"You've a good catch this time, haven't you?" Mrs. Merrill's voice behind her reassured Mary Jane. Her mother had followed them out and surely if her mother didn't mind those queer things, they must be all right for she well knew her mother didn't like spiders any better than she did!
"But what are they?" insisted Alice wonderingly.
"Don't you know," laughed Mrs. Bryan, "they're lobsters. Sam caught 'em just to-day and a fine lot they are too. Do you like lobsters?"
"Um-m," replied Alice, "do I? You just try me! But all the lobsters I ever ate were red, bright red."
"Sure enough," laughed Mrs. Bryan as she bustled about a great iron pot in a corner, "and all you ever will eat will be, I hope, because they'll be cooked. The cooking makes 'em red. These are alive."
"But if they're alive you can't cook 'em!" exclaimed Mary Jane in great excitement.
"Oh, yes we can," replied Mrs. Bryan comfortably, "just that easily. We have the water boiling hot and dump 'em in—just that quick and they never know what happens to 'em. Now you can go out this door," she added, "because we've got to hurry now with supper. But don't you go far, for pretty soon you'll hear a gong and that means 'come to supper!' and you come first thing because I know you must be hungry."
Mary Jane and Alice needed no urging—they were hungry, for it had been a long time since breakfast at Cousin Louise's, and their hurried luncheon in Boston wasn't much to remember.