"And not one where you bob for apples and walk around the house backward. I've done both those till I never want to do them again. I mean some new kind of a party."
But they could not think of anything new that seemed exactly what they wanted; so the next day they went in to see Miss Betty after school and asked her about it.
"Why, a chafing-dish party, of course," she said. "That's exactly the thing to have. You make a lot of indigestible things to eat and then you go to sleep and dream of ghosts and goblins, and hear shivery noises and groans and such things—just what you want, on Hallowe'en! I can think of a lot of awfully good things to have, things warranted to give you nightmares."
Jack said that suited him exactly, but Mildred was not so sure.
"Don't you think we might have two or three different kinds of things," she suggested doubtfully. "Some of them, for the boys, might be pretty bad; and some others for the girls a lot better. I don't want to dream of ghosts!"
Miss Betty was willing to do this, but Jack objected. "Be a sport, Mildred!" he said. "Remember it's Hallowe'en."
"Well, we'll see," she said at last. "Perhaps I'll eat a few dreadful things just to see what will happen. Now what can we have? I can't use a chafing dish at all."
"Jack can," Miss Betty said, laughing. Jack's cooking never ceased to be a joke.
"I? I never cooked in one in my life, except cheese dreams, at the Dwights'," Jack assured her.
"A chafing dish and a frying-pan are just the same sort of thing, and you know you learned all about frying-pans in the summer, so now, of course, you must show what you can do. I'll give you the receipts and tell you just how to make the things, but you must use a chafing-dish; if you won't—then, of course, I won't be able to help with the party at all."