“Well, I don’t believe people can work well if they do not eat sensibly. I can eat three meals comfortably, but I agree with Dr. Richardson: we could do without both the others better than the mid-day meal. I suppose if you and I had kept on for a couple of hours longer we should have been a pair of wilted beings.”
“Yes, there is nothing like leaving off and resting before one is really tired, if one wants to get through a great deal without feeling it; but it is a very difficult thing to do.”
“I know it; especially difficult to those who need it most,—the nervous, energetic women; to the phlegmatic ones it comes easy enough, and they seldom overwork.”
“I have eaten the last of your ‘weal and hammer,’ my dear, and I agree with Silas Wegg: ‘it mellars the organ,’—and now I am ready for work. The next thing is to ice those cakes, I suppose, and I will put on the sugar to boil.”
“No, I have French icing ready, but I forgot until this minute to make some coloring; I bought the cochineal yesterday.”
“Well, there’s plenty of time; it will only take a few minutes; I’ll put it to boil and we will both get the Genoese cakes ready while it does so.”
Molly handed to her a packet containing an ounce of cochineal and one of cream of tartar, mixed; this was put to boil in half a pint of water, and was to reduce to half. While this was going on Molly got out some raspberry jam and the lemon paste she had made.
“I wonder what I should have done if these good things had not come so apropos!”—alluding to her mother-in-law’s gift.
“Done, my dear? You would not have felt the lack of them; you would just have made your jumbles and some cocoanut macaroons and cones; made some sponge drop-cakes, which you would have iced, and would have forgotten to wish even that you had not the other things; I know you, Molly.”
Molly laughed. “To tell the truth, I had thought the matter over, and decided to make some orange paste, for which I have a very old recipe, and as two oranges are enough, it would not have been very costly.”