If you could have followed her gaze with dotted lines,
as they do in the cartoons, you would have seen that it was not the
peaches, or the prickly pears, or the strawberries, or the
muskmelon or even the grapes, that held her eye. In the center of
that wonderful window was an oddly woven basket. In the basket
were brown things that looked like sweet potatoes. One knew that
they were not. A sign over the basket informed the puzzled gazer
that these were maymeys from Cuba.
Maymeys from Cuba. The humor of it might have struck Jennie
if she had not been so Scotch, and so hungry. As it was, a slow,
sullen, heavy Scotch wrath rose in her breast. Maymeys from Cuba.
The wantonness of it! Peaches? Yes. Grapes, even, and pears
and cherries in snow time. But maymeys from Cuba--why, one did not
even know if they were to be eaten with butter, or with vinegar, or
in the hand, like an apple. Who wanted maymeys from Cuba? They
had gone all those hundreds of miles to get a fruit or vegetable
thing--a thing so luxurious, so out of all reason that one did not
know whether it was to be baked, or eaten raw. There they lay, in
their foreign-looking basket, taunting Jennie who needed a quarter.
Have I told you how Jennie happened to be hungry and jobless?
Well, then I sha'n't.
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