"If we are satisfied with our bread we might come again and gather a good load that will last some time," said Elizabeth.
When they reached home they lost no time in stripping off the thin rind of one of the fruits, and found beneath it a white doughy substance something like new bread. Tommy could not forbear tasting it, in spite of what Mary had said.
"What horrid, nasty stuff!" she exclaimed, making a wry face. "It's like—what is it like? Taste it, Bess."
Elizabeth pinched off a very small piece and ate it.
"It seems to me like sweetened flour with a smack of artichokes," she said. "I hope it is better cooked; scrape it all out, Mary, while I get the oven ready."
When the pulp was scraped out, Mary kneaded it into a flat cake and cut it into three equal portions. Elizabeth put them into the stone oven, and in about twenty minutes took them out, slightly browned, and smelling somewhat of new bread. Allowing them to cool, the girls each nibbled a little.
"Not half bad," said Tommy. "I suppose we'll get used to it, and like it better. I never liked carrots when I was a child, and I do now. If we only had some butter! Why aren't there any cocoanuts here, I wonder? They have milk, haven't they? If we had some we might make some butter out of the cream."
At this the other girls laughed outright.
"I'm afraid we shouldn't get much cream out of cocoanuts," said Elizabeth. "The milk is a sickly kind of juice, isn't it, Mary?"
"Yes; I had some once, long ago, when Father took me to the fair at Exeter. He knocked down the cocoanut at one of the shies. I didn't like the milk at all."