Carolyn Wells 
Ptomaine Street 

Ptomaine Street (1921) by Carolyn Wells is a Jazz Age story about Warble Petticoat–who begins life as Warble Mildew, is promptly expelled from school for putting a caterpillar done the neck of another girl (which result–the expulsion–Warble has been longing for), teaches herself to bake a mean cream pie, becomes a waitress at a restaurant, presents a prosperous banker by the name of Petticoat with a piece of a perfect cream pie, and manages to become Mrs. Petticoat. Warble is an orphan and from a very different world from the one she enters as Petticoat’s blushing bride. She finds her new home and new lifestyle to be greatly at odds with who she is and decides to try adjust her new surroundings to suit her. She finds this a very hard task indeed-despite entertaining her new friends with a grand party full of cream pies–to eat and to throw!–and various other entertainments…