The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms: Or Lost in the Wilds of FloridaHope, Laura Lee
General
The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms: Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida
Hope, Laura Lee
Florida -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Motion pictures -- Production and direction -- Juvenile fiction
Then with his keen knife he cut the orange in a peculiar spiral manner,
with the skin left on so that eventually he had a long yellow strip, with
the sections of orange clinging to the yellow rind.
"Now, all you've got to do is to run your mouth along that strip," he
directed, "and you get all the juice--that is, all you don't miss. It
takes a little practice; but I've got some black boys that can get every
drop. Watch!"
Rapidly he ate along the extended strip of skin, to which clung the cut
sections of orange. In a moment it was clean.
"It's an awfully crude way of doing it--but, as long as we're in an
orange grove, let's do as the orange 'grovers' do," laughed Alice.
"I'm game!" cried Paul.
"Same here!" put in Russ, and they cut their oranges as the man had done.
The latter then prepared one each for Ruth and Alice, and amid much
laughter--the girls and the young men leaning far over so as not to drip
the juice on their clothes--they finished the delicious fruit.
"Now bring on your bathtub!" cried Russ.
"There's the spring," the man said. "There's a basin near it, and it's
clean."
Laughing over the new way of eating oranges, but voting that it was worth
while, even if it was a bit "smeary," the young folks washed their hands
and faces, and kept on through the grove, growing more and more glad at
every step that they had come to Florida.
"And now for the Fountain of Youth!" cried Paul.
"I don't feel that I need it, after that delicious orange," laughed Ruth.
"Indeed, if you get any younger, you'll go back to kindergarten days,"
remarked Paul.
"Thank you. I don't want to be quite as young as that."
The Fountain of Youth, one of the curiosities of St. Augustine, is on
Myrtle avenue, two blocks north of the orange grove, and the four
laughing young people were soon there.
"Is this really the fountain Ponce de Leon thought would give eternal
youth?" asked Ruth, half-seriously, as they stood near the little
roofed-over spring.
"That is the legend," declared Paul. "Of course that's not saying it's
so. But the spring has one peculiar quality."
"What's that?" asked Russ.
"The waters rise and fall without any particular cause. Sometimes they
are higher than at others, and none of the other wells, or springs, in
this vicinity do that. So you see it may be miraculous after all."
"Let's try it," suggested Alice, who was always ready for anything new.
"Oh, but perhaps it isn't good water," objected Ruth, more cautious. "We
may get typhoid, or something like that."
"Nonsense!" laughed Alice, but she looked questioningly at Paul.
"Lots of people drink the water," he said. "Allow me," and he lowered a
small bucket attached to a rope made fast to the roof of the well.
He drew it up, brimming over, and with a low bow handed some of the water
to Alice, pouring it into a small collapsible cup he happened to have
with him.
"Drink! And may you never grow old!" he said, and there was more of
meaning in his eyes than in his words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account