"The same, though only millionnaires' sons could afford to use them for bait in the East. Crawfish meat in New York costs as much as--oh, a single pound of it costs as much as a big sugar-cured ham. I never dreamed of buying it--I never dared hope that I might taste it--until I came out here." The appearance of a new course checked conversation on the subject, but one of the guests eyed suspiciously a tiny French chop, the tip of its bone covered with paper, and said to the woman at her right:-- "Don't appear to know what we're bein' fed with here. Wonder what this is? It's little enough to be a side bone o' cat. Must be all right, though; Mis' Taggess is eatin' hern." A form of blanc-mange was another mystery. Said one woman to another:-- "It must be the ice-cream the soldiers told about, for it's powerful cold, besides bein' powerful good." "That's so," was the reply; "but 'pears to me I didn't hear the men say nothin' about there bein' gravy poured on theirn." Some of the guests were becoming full to their extreme capacity,--a condition which stimulates geniality in some natures, ugliness in others. They had come to criticise--to learn of their hostess's extravagance. They had remained in the parlor only long enough to be entirely overcome by its magnificence and to exchange whispered remarks about the shameful waste of money wrung from the hard-working farmers. The dinner had been good beyond their wildest expectations; not the best Fourth of July picnic refreshments, or even the memorable dinner given by Squire Burress, the richest farmer in the county, when his daughter was married, compared with it. What was so good must also have been very expensive. Criticism must begin with something, and the blanc-mange seemed a proper subject to one woman, who was reputed to be very religious. So she groaned:-- "This--whatever it is--is so awful good that it must ha' been sinful costly--actually sinful." "Yes, indeed," sighed another. "One might say, a wicked waste o' money." "Blanc-mange?--costly?" Grace said, curbing an indignant impulse; "why, 'tis nothing but corn-starch, milk, sugar, and a little flavoring. I wonder what dessert dish could be cheaper!" "You don't say!" exclaimed a woman less malevolent or more practical than the others. "Now, I just ain't a-goin' to give you no peace till you give me the receipt for it." "I'll give it, with pleasure; or better still, you shall have a package of the corn-starch,--'tis worth only a few cents,--with full directions on the label. I might possibly forget some part of them, you know." "Me too," said several women as one, and criticism was temporarily abated. Before a new excuse for reviving it could be found, the ice-cream--the real article, and without gravy, of course--made its appearance. It was consumed in silence, in as much haste as possible with anything so cold, and also with evident enjoyment. Then the opponent of sinful extravagance remarked:--