very well with tongue."
"We'll begin with the tongue, then, and keep the macaroons till
afterwards. Hand it over."
She took a rowlock and shattered the jar which held the tongue. She
succeeded in throwing some of the broken glass overboard. A good deal
more of it stuck in the tongue.
"What I generally do," she said, "when I'm out in the _Blue Wanderer_
by myself and happen to have a tongue, which isn't often on account of
their being so beastly expensive--but whenever I have I simply bite bits
off it as I happen to want them. But I know that's not polite. If you
prefer it, Cousin Frank, you can gouge out a chunk or two with your
knife before I gnaw it."
This seemed to Frank a good suggestion. He got out his knife.
"Sylvia Courtney is always frightfully polite," said Priscilla.
Frank hesitated. The recollection of Sylvia Courtney's appreciation of
Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" and her fondness for "Gray's Elegy" for the
sake of its calm came to him. He would not be classed with her. He put
his knife back into his pocket and bit a small bit off the tongue. Then
he leaned over the side of the boat and spat out a good deal of broken
glass. He also spat out some blood.
"That seems to be rather a glassy bit you've got," said Priscilla. "Are
you cut?"
"A little," said Frank, "but it doesn't matter."
Priscilla bit off a large mouthful and handed the tongue back to Frank.
Her cheeks bulged a good deal, but she chewed without any appearance
of discomfort. Frank had read in books about "the call of the wild."
He now, for the first time, felt the lust for savage life. He took the
tongue, tore off a fragment with his teeth, and discovered as he ate it,
that he was exceedingly hungry.
"Your lemonade bottle," he said, a few minutes later, "has one of those
glass stoppers in it instead of a cork. How shall I open it?"
"Shank of a rowlock," said Priscilla. "Those spies on the island have
got their tents down at last They're packing up now."
Frank opened the lemonade bottle and then glanced at the island. The
female spy was packing a holdall. Her companion was staggering down the
beach towards the place where Flanagan's old boat lay high and dry
on her side. He carried the packing case on his shoulder. Priscilla,
tilting her head back, drank the lemonade from its bottle in large
gulps. Then she opened the parcel of biscuits and munched a macaroon
contentedly.
"It's dashed annoying," said Frank, "having to sit he
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