"Delicious, dear. I only wish it were breakfast time now. And how did you get along, Jack?"
"You gave me the hardest of all," Jack grumbled. "But I did it, all the same. I'd have cheese dreams, and corned beef hash first; then I'd have pigs in blankets on toast; and camp coffee; and then corn cakes and syrup to finish off with."
Jack smiled complacently. "That's what I call a good, substantial meal."
Mildred was screaming with laughter as he finished.
"Cheese dreams and pigs in blankets, and corned beef hash, Mother Blair! For Sunday night supper!"
"You'd have regular Hallowe'en nightmares after that meal, Jack!" said his mother, laughing too. "However, as you know how to make all those, we will let you have them—on paper. Only when you get a supper for this family you need not have quite so many things, especially if we have company; they might not appreciate them. Now are you ready for the next question?"
The examination proved such fun that they kept it up all the morning. They told how to lay a table for breakfast, luncheon and dinner; how to arrange a sick-room tray; what to give a little child who came in to a meal; how to make fudge, and sandwiches, and tea and salads and cake; how to put up jelly, and how to cook eggs in different ways; some of these things Brownie and Jack did not know, but most of them they wrote down on their papers very well indeed. And they planned all sorts of meals, and that was the most fun of all, family dinners, and company luncheons, and picnic suppers, and party meals for Thanksgiving and Fourth of July and Washington's Birthday and other times. It really was not so much of an examination as it was a game.
Finally Mother Blair said they had done enough. "You know so much more than I thought you did that I'm satisfied," she said. "Really and truly, children, I'm proud of you! You all get a hundred in your examination, and you each have earned a prize beside for standing at the top of your three classes."
Then she opened the packages she had had in her lap all this time and brought out three books.
"Before I distribute the prizes I must make a speech," she said. "That's the way it's always done at school, you know.