"Oh! I couldn't somehow make out what kind of an animile the meat come off of."
"Nuther could I," said her vis-à-vis, with a full mouth, "but I'm goin' to worry my ole man to raise some of 'em on the farm, for it's powerful good, an' no mistake."
A buzz of assent went round the table; the ice was broken, so another guest said:—
"Mis' Somerton, I've been dyin' to know what that there soup was made of that we begun on. I never tasted anythin' so good in all my born days."
"Indeed? I'm very glad you liked it. 'Twas made of crawfish."
A score of knives and forks clattered upon plates, and ten women assumed attitudes of amazement and consternation. Finally one of them succeeded in gasping:—
"Them little things that bores holes 'longside the crick? the things that boys makes fish-bait of?"
"The same, though only millionnaires' sons could afford to use them for bait in the East. Crawfish meat in New York costs as much as—oh, a single pound of it costs as much as a big sugar-cured ham. I never dreamed of buying it—I never dared hope that I might taste it—until I came out here."
The appearance of a new course checked conversation on the subject, but one of the guests eyed suspiciously a tiny French chop, the tip of its bone covered with paper, and said to the woman at her right:—