“Yes, and you’ll find your money goes a deal further; my receipts don’t call for eggs and butter as if they grew out on the bushes.”
“Well, you see,” said Molly timidly, “we need so little of anything that even a recipe which calls for what seems many eggs or much butter can generally be divided by four for us, and the four eggs or half pound of butter become only one egg and two ounces of butter; so we can have the good things and still spend little.”
“But then you have so little of it, and it wastes time to make things in small quantities.”
“Yes, but my time is not valuable, and besides it would be no economy for me to make things too plain, for we might not eat them at all; and the same would happen if I made much at a time of anything,—it would not be eaten up. Mr. Bishop likes variety.”
“Well, I believe in husbands’ liking food that’s according to their means, and not in young women wearing their lives out cooking for them. Mr. Merit was always satisfied with a plain, wholesome dinner, and that I took care he had.”
Mrs. Merit’s words were verging on the unpleasant, but her manner was so unconscious that Molly felt sure only kindness was meant; she was simply instructing the young and inexperienced wife.
“Now there’s poor Mrs. Lennox, she’s got four children, and her husband is as poor as a church mouse, and as pernickety about his eating—nothing she can get is good enough for him; and the way she manages to make both ends meet, and to dress them children as nice as any, is a wonder to every one, though, poor thing, she is wearing herself out.”
Shortly after, finding Molly was not curious about Mr. and Mrs. Lennox, Mrs. Merit protested that she was paying an unwarrantably long visit, rose and left, saying, as she did so, “You won’t be lonely long, you are not like strangers; being such friends of Mrs. Winfield, every one will make a point of calling very soon.”
Molly noticed, as she returned to the parlor, that Mrs. Merit was standing at the door of the house she had pointed out as Mrs. Lennox’s; doubtless she had gone to report her visit.
Molly went from her visitor to the kitchen. She had ordered in the morning a porterhouse steak and a dozen oysters on the half shell. As the butcher was also fishmonger, he had no objection to send so few, and she had impressed on him that both were to be sent after five, and the oysters opened at the house. She now told Marta, when they should come, to put the oysters into the ice-box at once, and went to assure herself that the fire was made up and would be ready by five o’clock to cook. She found, as she had feared, that Marta had forgotten, and the fire was at that stage of intense brightness which gives place to a mass of dead white ash a little later, but would quickly burn up with fresh fuel.