Thus Ruth and Alice exclaimed as they entered the orange grove, a short distance from the city gates. And indeed the scene that greeted them, and the sweet odors, might well call for this praise and desire from even the most blasé tourist.
Even Russ, grown accustomed by his calling to odd scenes, was impressed by the wonderful sight, and as for Paul, who had something of the romantic nature of Ruth, it was a pure delight to him.
"I wonder if they will take any pictures here?" said Ruth, softly—at first it seemed as if one must talk in whispers so as not to disturb the beauty of the place.
"Oh, I'm going to film you here," announced Russ. "Stand still a moment and I'll snap you now. There's a pretty place."
Ruth and Alice assumed graceful poses, and soon their likenesses were registered on the film. Russ never tired of taking pictures, and when he was not making moving ones he was using his small hand camera. How many times he had taken the likeness of Ruth it would be hard to estimate.
They wandered about the orange grove, and the young men bought some of the delicious fruit, right from the trees, and fully ripe. It had a flavor all its own.
"Let me show you how to eat an orange," suggested one of the men of the grove, as he saw the young people going about, "in the way it is usually done when no orange spoons are to be had."
"Somebody has said," went on the man, "that you need to lean over a bathtub to eat an orange this way, but it's worth while. You get a little smeared up doing it; but you can wash in the spring over there," and he pointed to one amid a pile of stones.
Then with his keen knife he cut the orange in a peculiar spiral manner, with the skin left on so that eventually he had a long yellow strip, with the sections of orange clinging to the yellow rind.
"Now, all you've got to do is to run your mouth along that strip," he directed, "and you get all the juice—that is, all you don't miss. It takes a little practice; but I've got some black boys that can get every drop. Watch!"