And regardless of the staring street boys who grinned at seeing the “old gent” playing nursemaid, he crossed the street to a cheerful gas-lighted pastry-cook’s shop, where he and his party were accommodated with a small private parlor and a neatly-spread tea-table.
Before they got half through with tea, Dick joined them and reported that he had procured the tickets for a whole compartment in the first-class carriages, which he declared to be quite as comfortable as the civil custom-house officer had represented them to be.
Dick was served with a cup of tea, a plate of sallyluns, toast, periwinkles, shrimps, and the finest strawberries he had ever seen.
Dick quaffed his tea with avidity, for he was both heated and thirsty; and he also enjoyed the toast and the sallyluns; but he glanced suspiciously at the periwinkles and the shrimps.
“What manner of fish, fruit or vegetable may these be?” he inquired, taking up a plate of periwinkles and squinting at them.
“Taste and see,” answered Anna, as with the point of a pin she delicately drew one from its snail-like shell.
Drusilla was at the same time peeling a shrimp for little Lenny.
Dick glanced from one to the other and shuddered. These tea-table delicacies looked—the one so like an insect, the other so like a reptile.
“Try this, Dick,” coaxed Anna, as she offered him a morsel from the point of a new pin.
Dick shrank.