She was awakened¹ by the dinner gong, booming loudly on the terrace; her predilection² for the woods about the crater³ was an old story. She sat up with a yawn and a naughty face. Such good things she had eaten at Government House last night, and even her strong little teeth were weary of fibrous cattle killed only when too old and feeble to do the work of the infrequent horse. She detested⁴ even the Sunday chicken, invitingly⁵ brown without but as tough as the cows within, so recent her exit from the court of much repose⁶. That chicken! No West Indian ever forgets her. She looks alive and full of pride, as, with her gizzard tucked under her left wing, she is carried high but mincingly⁷ down the dining room to the head of the table by a yellow wench or superannuated⁸ butler. When a venerable cock is sacrificed, he is boiled as a tribute to the doughtiness⁹ of his sex, but the more abundant ladies of the harem are given a brown and burnished¹⁰ shroud¹¹, deceitful to the last.

Butter, Julia had rarely tasted; milk was almost as scarce; but she would have been quite willing to live on the delicious fruits and vegetables of the Indies, bread and coffee. Her mother, however, forced her to eat meat once a day, hoping to check the an?mia inevitable¹² in the tropics.

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