In short, Molly’s dinner was a success, and Harry no longer looked on cabbage as unfit for a “cultured palate.”

While Harry smoked his pipe on the piazza, after dinner, Molly went over her accounts. Her grocer’s bill, for what she supposed would be a month’s stores, was as follows:—

2 pounds loaf sugar,$0.20
10 pounds granulated sugar,.80
25 pounds of the best flour,1.00
5 gallons kerosene,1.00
2 pecks of potatoes,.40
1 bottle (small) of olives,.30
4 pounds corn meal,.10
5 pounds lard,.70
White pepper,.10
Salt,.15
1 gallon vinegar,.30
4 pounds Java coffee,1.20
1 pound tea,.75
Common soap,.25
Toilet-soap,.10
Starch,.08
Bluing,.15
Mustard,.20
Olive oil (large bottle),.95
Cracker meal,.15
1 pound cheese,.18
1 bottle Worcestershire sauce,.30
Cooking-wine (1 bottle), .50
Total,$9.86

There were several things, such as soap, starch, flour, and sugar, Molly would have liked to buy in large quantities, but she wanted first to see her expenditure; she reckoned that what she had ordered of each article would last a month, and a few things, such as vinegar, bluing, sauce, wine, etc., much longer. “But I must wait till the end of the week before I can really know. The first week or month is always more expensive in housekeeping. I must add, too, to my expenditure, to-day, ten cents for cream, which will make it $3, but I have meat in the house, and if I allow one-fourth of the grocery bill for this week I have left $4.50.”

Molly was not without her anxieties that she might be wrong on her estimates, often as she had gone over them on paper. Suddenly she looked up. “I forgot the yeast, and I want to make bread!”

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Butter is no longer thought indispensable to the dinner-table, and butter-plates are consequently a matter of taste.

CHAPTER IV.
BREAD-MAKING—BREAKFAST—BAKED POTATOES—CORN MUFFINS—BREADED CHOPS—HOW TO FRY.