How many
times he had taken the likeness of Ruth it would be hard to estimate.
They wandered about the orange grove, and the young men bought some of
the delicious fruit, right from the trees, and fully ripe. It had a
flavor all its own.
"Let me show you how to eat an orange," suggested one of the men of the
grove, as he saw the young people going about, "in the way it is usually
done when no orange spoons are to be had."
"Somebody has said," went on the man, "that you need to lean over a
bathtub to eat an orange this way, but it's worth while. You get a little
smeared up doing it; but you can wash in the spring over there," and he
pointed to one amid a pile of stones.
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.
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