Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/148

 it's all a matter of taste. If you'd been brought up on them or rats or what not you smack your lips over 'em."

"I'll take the what not," declared Cat, "but excuse me from Chink's grub."

"You know," said Turner with a smile, "the Chinese used to think that pig wasn't fit to eat till a young Chink fingering around in the ashes of a burnt-down house stuck his thumb in the cremated family pig and then stuck it in his mouth to cool and got the taste. And, when he spread around the news of what a dainty it was, every Chinaman in the neighborhood burnt down his house with the pig in it so as to pleasure himself with that wonderful taste. They'd been doing that for a thousand years before they discovered you could roast a pig without burning a house down."

"Where'd you get that from?" inquired Jimmy.

"That's from Lamb on Roast Pig."

"Lamb on Roast Pig!" laughed Cat. "What are you giving us?"

"I mean," drawled Turner, "a fellow named Charles Lamb wrote the dope."