Many hands make light work, and in half an hour everything was about ready. The table was laid, and wonderfully pretty it looked, too; for under Jessie’s supervision it had blossomed out into dainty doilies, and bits of shining glass and silver; and in the center was a low basket of goldenrod.
Not finding a satisfactory dessert in the cupboard, Helen had run over to the grocer’s herself, and returned triumphantly with a box of candied ginger, an Edam cheese, and a tin box of biscuits. These and the coffee-cups she arranged on a side-table, and surveyed the result with a very pardonable pride.
Millicent had filled and lighted the large swinging-lamp over the table, and candles twinkled from a pair of old-fashioned candelabra which Jessie had discovered in the attic. In the kitchen, too, all was in readiness.
Betty had boiled and mashed the potatoes until Millicent declared they looked like cotton batting. Marjorie had broiled the steak to the proverbial turn, fried the onions to an odoriferous brown, and made a potful of her celebrated coffee; and now, flushed with success and Hester’s fire, she sat on the edge of the kitchen table, her iron spoon still in her hand, like a scepter.
“Whe-e-w!” said Helen, coming out. “You must be cooking comparisons out here, they’re so odorous.”
“In onion is strength,” replied Betty.
“Why don’t you take something for that punning habit, Betty? Really, it’s getting worse, I think. Oh, I wish Nan and the Matron would come! I am so starved.”
And in a few minutes they did come—tired and chilled with their long walk, and without the much-desired Irish lady.
“Where’s your captive?”
“Couldn’t you catch her?”