Norah was not at all busy just then so she got a kitchen chair and hunted on the top shelf in the tin closet and found several things for Brownie. One was a little tumbler of heavy glass, half the size of a small jelly glass; it had been used in traveling one summer when the Blairs were younger. Then there were six muffin tins fastened together like a pan which were never used because they made muffins so tiny that Jack said six were only a bite. And beside these she found a little tin cutter meant to cut vegetables into shapes for soup; this one was a tube with a star on the end, or rather the outline of one. Norah said that it would make lovely little cookies, each one the size of a five cent piece. Brownie was delighted with it.
"But, Norah, we won't want muffins," she said. "I remember when I was five, I couldn't have even one for breakfast—not till I was about seven, I guess it was. And Mother says Mrs. Lane is just as partickler as can be about Helen."
"I know something you can make in 'em," nodded Norah. "Not muffins. You just wait. You make it out of rice, and rice is awful good for children."
So Brownie ran into her mother's room to tell her what they had found and plan the meal with her.
"Suppose you have a really nice luncheon for both the dolls and the girls," she said. "You can have the low sewing table and set it with small plates and little napkins and have low chairs around it; the four children could sit on two sides of the table and Helen at one end and you at the other, and the company could all hold their children in their laps and you need not have any doll at all because you are hostess. How would that do?"
"Perfectly lovely, Mother. And now what shall we have to eat?"
"How would you like a hot first course—perhaps some kind of chicken and potatoes, with jelly and little cups of cocoa!"
"Oh, yes, Mother; and tiny sandwiches!"
"Yes, indeed; and then some dessert that children like; will that be enough, do you think?"
"Well, if they are not so very hungry, I think it will be."