for some fruit, and he handed us one little apple. "Only this for a cent?" we cried; and so indignant were we that we reclaimed our cent and returned him his apple.
We managed to do ridiculous things daily. At our first evening meal at the hotel, a tall glass vase stood in the middle of the table filled with such strange flowers as we had never seen before. They were pale greenish white, with streaks of yellow. We thought it very kind of the proprietor to furnish them for us, and each of us took one and fastened it on our dress.
The waiters glanced at us in surprise, but it was nothing to the sensation we created when we rose to go out of the dining-room. People nudged each other and stared at us. Of the French maid who came to unfasten my dress I asked:
"Do we seem very foreign?"
"No, indeed," she replied, "I should have taken Mademoiselle for a French girl, except that she wears her hair loose on her back."
"Then why did the people in the dining-room stare at us so?"
She suppressed a giggle. "Yes, I know, Mademoiselle, I have heard about it. It is the flower Mademoiselle is wearing."
"What is the matter with it?"
"Nothing, except that it is not a flower—it is a vegetable, called celery."
I do not know how many more absurd things
