Mal grinned. “If you once start to think like that,” he said, “you’d have a hard time eating at all. Think about all those cute lambs, and those nice, sweet-tempered cows. And think about—”
“I do my best not to think about them,” Amy interrupted, “and if you don’t stop, I’m going to order a vegetable dinner and have an awful time!”
Still, when the food came, she and Peggy consented to try the hare, and were forced to agree that it was one of the most delicious things they had ever tasted. Amy also liked Peggy’s sauerbraten, which was a kind of sweet-and-sour pot roast of beef, done in a rich brown gravy and served with potato dumplings and red cabbage.
“You know, it’s an odd thing the way Americans eat,” Mal said between bites of the saddle of hare. “I’ll wager that there are millions of people in this country who have never eaten anything but beef and pork and perhaps a bit of fish. And I don’t mean poor people, either. I found out on my first tours here that there are many parts of the country where you can’t even get lamb or veal, and mutton is almost unheard of.”
“Is it very different in England?” Peggy asked.
Randy answered before Mal had a chance to reply. “In England they eat things that would make the average American turn pale with fright.” He laughed. “They eat suet puddings and kidney pies and chopped toad....”
“Chopped toad!” Amy almost shrieked.
“It’s not at all what it sounds,” Mal explained in his most British tones. “It’s actually a sort of a hamburger thing, and it’s not made of toads or anything like toads. And, personally, I can’t stand it.”
“Is the food the reason why you left England?” Amy asked teasingly.
“Partly,” Mal said with a smile. “But not because I didn’t like it. I liked it well enough when I could get it. The reason I left was that I wasn’t able to earn enough money to eat with any degree of regularity. When I got a part with an American movie company that was filming a picture in England, I was asked to come back with them, and I jumped at the chance. I made a few films in Hollywood, and then I decided to come to New York.”