The older girl hesitated, frowned and said thoughtfully, "You would get tired of them very soon, girlie. Lots you would not touch at all. For instance, sour milk and sugar."
"No, I shouldn't like that," Peace confessed, with an expressive shrug of her shoulders, "but—"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," the obliging Gussie interrupted. "Tomorrow night we will have a French dinner, and you must tell everything you know about France."
"Oh, how splendid!" Both children clapped their hands gleefully. "And next night we'll have a German dinner, and then an Italian and a Spanish and a Denmarkish and a Swiss, and a—a—"
Peace paused to think of some other countries, while Gussie stood appalled at the result of her suggestion. But a glance at the glowing face on the pillow was ample reward, and suddenly realizing that she had given the weary prisoner a new and profitable play to occupy the long hours while the girls were away at school, she recklessly promised, "Dinners for every country in the world, if we can find out what each nation eats. But mind, you must learn all you can about the people and their land."
"It'll be fun to do that," Peace answered readily. "I wonder why they don't teach g'ography that way in school. It would be a heap more interesting."
Thus the long weeks rolled by, and unknown to Peace herself, she was not only keeping abreast of her classes in school, but forging ahead in her studies as she had never done before.
"It's so int'resting to learn that way," sighed the little prisoner blissfully, after a particularly impressive lesson supper one night. "The only thing is, we're going to run out of countries pretty soon, and then what will we do? Already we've reached Asia. I ate China last night and India tonight. Tomorrow 'twill be Japan, and then there is only Africa and South America left before we get around the world. They have all been such fun! Some countries know how to cook lots better than others. Now, I really dreaded getting to China, 'cause the books say Chinamen eat roasted rats, and I couldn't bear to think of Gussie's dishing up such horrible things as that; but the slop chewey and rice she cooked were simply deelicious. I've always heard a lot about the India folks eating curry, too, and I thought it meant the hair they scratched off their horses with a curry-comb; so I was much surprised when Gussie made some for my dinner tonight. It's only soup with some stuff in it that makes it 'most too hot to eat.
"I can't imagine what she will give me in Africa, 'cause we ain't cannibals, and she never will even hint what's coming next, but I guess she will get around it some way. Why, in some countries the people eat horrible things! In West Indies they bake snakes and fry palm worms! Think of it! Ugh, it makes me shiver! The folks in Brazil eat ants, and in New Caledonia it's spiders. The Mexicans cook parrots and eat dynamite. Do you s'pose they ever 'xplode? And in France where Marie was born they just love snails—raw! I'd as soon eat angleworms myself. My! I'm glad I'm a civilised huming being. Course Gussie hasn't fed me any of that junk, and it's been lots of fun traveling this way. I wish the world wasn't round, but just stretched away and away. Then there'd be room for more countries."