"You're a smart womans, ma'am! That's just what it tis. His meat, what he would sell my customers, what trust me for years, phew! Ma'am, excuse me, but I must tell you—it tis all bad!"
The girls had to laugh at the disgusted face on the butcher. "But I trust he didn't get any of your people from you?" added Miss Miller.
"Some few—what never paid me on time, anyways. The odders all stuck! But I tells you, I had to come down with my good meat, to his prices for bad meat!" and the poor man sighed loudly as he folded his fat arms over his rubicund form.
The round steak spread out for inspection was not what the Guide wanted. She wanted a sirloin. "I carry a few for my fancy customers. Folks like Mrs. Sherwood's always buys round."
A fine cut was chosen, Miss Miller showing the girls why she took a steak that had very fine veinings of fat all through it. The colour was a fresh red and a goodly-sized tenderloin lay along the long narrow bone.
The sirloin was twenty-six cents a pound; the girls all stared when they heard that the steak—for one dinner—would cost almost a dollar of their camp fund.
Miss Miller selected two pounds of flank-beef and the butcher gave her a quantity of bones for nothing. The beef cost sixteen cents a pound. She pointed out the difference between top-round, flank, and shin meat, for soup. The girls had learned more in one morning about the meat they ate than they ever thought of knowing all their lives.
"If we planned to make 'beef roll' which is very nice cut cold, or with brown gravy, we would use a piece of flank. The shin meat makes the most nourishing soup, I think. I believe some folks say the flavour of flank-beef is too strong to be good, but I will leave you to judge of the quality when you taste it."
"I have a little chunk of top-round here, ma'am, that I want to get rid of. I am most through with my route for to-day an' will sell this cheap."
The butcher picked up a small piece of beef and weighed it. "It's two and a half pounds—you can have it for forty cents, ma'am."