Thursday, September 28, 2017

Cabbage Soup

The man from the upland village went away first, and as the landlady took him out to the door our Irish friend said to the woman from the foothills, “He seems very nice.”  “Do you think so?” said the woman.  Her nose seemed literally to turn up.  “Well, don’t you?” asked our friend.  “We-e-e-ell,” said the woman, “round about here we don’t care much for people from that village”  “Why not?” asked our friend.  “We-e-e-ell, for one thing, you sometimes go up there and you smell cabbage soup, and you say, ‘That smells good,’ and they say, ‘Oh, we’re just having cabbage soup.’”  A pause fell, and our friend inquired, “Then don’t they offer you any?”  “Oh, yes.”  “And isn’t it good?”  “It’s very good.  But, you see, we grow cabbages down here and they can’t up there, and they never buy any from us, and we’re always missing ours.  So, really, we don’t know what to think.”
 - Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

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