e most
extraordinary little fried animals which quite startled me, they were
so like exaggerated brown spiders, done in egg and breadcrumbs. "Soft
shell crabs, dear child," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "and you eat every bit,
down to the tippiest end of his claw."

I should never have managed the green corn, which grows like lots of
pearls set close together in rows on a fat stick, if Mr. Parker hadn't
scraped all the pearls off for me, with a fork, and put butter and salt
on them. I liked him a little better after that, for he did the thing
with great skill. When I had got so far, nothing could surprise me, and
I didn't turn a hair when I found that I was expected to eat pears cut
up with salad oil. But they were alligator pears, and when you tasted
them, it appeared that they had nothing whatever to do with the fruit
kingdom. Best of all, I liked the watermelon which came at the end, cut
in little balls, looking like strawberry water ice, and soaked in
champagne. I hope that all the things to eat in America won't be so
nice, or I may grow stout before I go back; and Vic says it is better
for a girl to hang herself.

It was very trying, too, to find that I was keeping every course
waiting. I've never been accused of greediness at home, though I've
often been made to feel guilty of most other sins in the calendar, but
I did feel queer when I began to realise that everybody else had
finished what was on their plates, when I'd just about discovered what
the thing was. It made me so uncomfortable to see them all leaning back
waiting for me, after their plates had been whisked away, that I took
to bolting the rest of my food, and by the time we'd got rid of nine
courses in about half an hour I felt qualified to write the
autobiography of an anaconda.

As for the iced water, I had intended to refuse it at any cost, because
Vic and Mother both solemnly warned me that it made _all_ the
difference between a complexion and mere skin. But the minute I landed,
I began thinking hard about iced water, and I soon discovered that when
you are in America a comparatively small consideration like a
complexion would never keep you from drinking it. In fact, nothing
would. You feel as if you must drink iced water, pints of iced water,
in rapid succession, if not only your complexion, but your whole face
were to be swept away in the deluge. Once you have got the taste
nothing can quench it but iced water, more iced water, and still more
iced wate