“No, mum.”
“Any celery?”
“Yis, mum; fine celery indeed. Will ye look at it, mum?”
“We oughtn’t to have celery until day after to-morrow,” said Helen, dubiously, as they went out to the wagon, “but I guess we’ll have to give up the alphabet plan. Let’s order celery and potatoes. And oh, look at that big pumpkin! Wouldn’t a pumpkin-pie be grand?”
“Gay,” said Hester. “We’ll take that—and that’s enough for to-day; you’ll call to-morrow, won’t you?”
“Yis, mum,” replied the man; and when the purchases were deposited on the kitchen table Helen and Hester felt proud of their choice.
Jessie had disappeared, but the stray notes of song floating out from her room made it an open secret that the attractions of her trinkets and fripperies had charmed her away from the culinary pastures. So Betty faced the butcher alone. She was very decided and businesslike. “We want meat for supper to-night,” said she, looking at Mr. Parkins’s card as if for inspiration. “ ‘Beef, Veal, Mutton, Lamb, Pork, and Poultry’—h’m! Well, we’ll begin at the beginning. Beefsteak, I think; you may send two nice porterhouse-steaks, and please send them as soon as possible. Then we’ll have a roast for to-morrow—a two-rib roast of beef; you may send that to-morrow morning.” The butcher noted down her orders, and went away.
Then the only committee still out was Marjorie and Millicent. When Betty, having finished her course, turned to them, they were in a wild state of excitement. They had decided to suggest things alternately, while the grocer wrote the list.
The grocer was a lanky, raw-boned young man with bushy red hair, and, seated in a chair with his pad and pencil, looked for all the world like a district schoolmaster; while the two girls stood before him, looking like a very animated spelling-match.
Marjorie, dancing on one foot, was twisting up the corners of her apron into knots, which she tied and untied with unconscious rapidity. Millicent stood firmly facing her, with folded arms and screwed-up forehead.