She took a rowlock and shattered the jar which held the tongue. She succeeded in throwing some of the broken glass overboard. A good deal more of it stuck in the tongue.
“What I generally do,” she said, “when I’m out in the Blue Wanderer by myself and happen to have a tongue, which isn’t often on account of their being so beastly expensive—but whenever I have I simply bite bits off it as I happen to want them. But I know that’s not polite. If you prefer it, Cousin Frank, you can gouge out a chunk or two with your knife before I gnaw it.”
This seemed to Frank a good suggestion. He got out his knife.
“Sylvia Courtney is always frightfully polite,” said Priscilla.
Frank hesitated. The recollection of Sylvia Courtney’s appreciation of Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty” and her fondness for “Gray’s Elegy” for the sake of its calm came to him. He would not be classed with her. He put his knife back into his pocket and bit a small bit off the tongue. Then he leaned over the side of the boat and spat out a good deal of broken glass. He also spat out some blood.
“That seems to be rather a glassy bit you’ve got,” said Priscilla. “Are you cut?”
“A little,” said Frank, “but it doesn’t matter.”
Priscilla bit off a large mouthful and handed the tongue back to Frank. Her cheeks bulged a good deal, but she chewed without any appearance of discomfort. Frank had read in books about “the call of the wild.” He now, for the first time, felt the lust for savage life. He took the tongue, tore off a fragment with his teeth, and discovered as he ate it, that he was exceedingly hungry.
“Your lemonade bottle,” he said, a few minutes later, “has one of those glass stoppers in it instead of a cork. How shall I open it?”
“Shank of a rowlock,” said Priscilla. “Those spies on the island have got their tents down at last. They’re packing up now.”