She was through her supper so soon that Mistress Brace again said, tartly:
"If you take not time to eat your victuals, seeing you are let off after supper, it is to the table you will stay until the rest of us are through."
Sally thought to herself, "I will tarry longer at the table to-morrow night," but now, off she flew, and in a trice was through the hedge, on the stones, and peeping with great care at a wonderful table, such as she had never dreamed of in her brightest of fancies.
The long board gleamed with shining, spotless linen. Glass and silver dishes covered the table. Sprays of green, and bright, choice flowers lay around, and in between the plates and glasses, with charming color and taste.
Corniel, in white clothes, with several colored girls about him, who were to assist in waiting, was flourishing about, placing food at proper spaces, setting chairs, and giving orders in a pompous way Sally thought he must enjoy.
Mammy Leezer's cookery was indeed most beautiful to look upon. The porcupine marmalade, on two separate platters of white china ware edged with gilt, was a thick jam made from plums or prunes, then turned out from long oval moulds, and stuck all over with small spikes of cocoanut meat, standing straight and stiff, looking in very truth like the quills of the little animal called the porcupine.
The melon puff was a splendid-looking mass, heaped high in a tall glass dish, and appearing as if made from strained melon pulp, and the whipped whites of eggs with powdered sugar.
The peach tart was a form of pie with golden-looking sauce peeping up between crisscross strips of rich puff paste. And pandowdy with sorghum foam had the look, in a deep glass dish, of being apple sauce and pie-crust mixed, with a delicious pyramid of golden-colored whipped sugar standing in a point on the top.
Chicken salad, in other long white and gilt platters, was beautifully ornamented with white and yellow rings of hard-boiled eggs, having sprigs of green run through the rings in a way to form fancy garlands above the crisp whitey-green bordering of lettuce leaves.
"Oh, it is the food of the Fairies! It is the food of the gods!"