‘Well, they are pretty good—good enough—but they are not made of ice-blocks.’
‘I want to know! Why aren’t they made of ice-blocks?’
I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expensiveness of ice in a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man or your ice-bill will weigh more than your ice. Then she cried out:
‘Dear me, do you buy your ice?’
‘We most surely do, dear.’
She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said:
‘Oh, I never heard of anything so silly! My! there’s plenty of it—it isn’t worth anything. Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight, right now. I wouldn’t give a fish-bladder for the whole of it.’
‘Well, it’s because you don’t know how to value it, you little provincial muggings. If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could buy all the whales in the market with it.’
She looked at me doubtfully, and said:
‘Are you speaking true?’