“I shall just put pepper, salt, and butter on it, it looks so pretty,—and to think there is only a pleasant odor!”
When Molly reached home she found Marta looking very scared.
“What is wrong?” asked Molly, sure that some disaster had occurred.
Marta silently pointed to the soup, which looked like pink curds and whey; then, turning rather sulkily to the stewed tomatoes, she evidently expected to be scolded.
Molly said nothing for the moment, but opened the oven and found the shoulder of lamb beautifully brown, and other things doing well; she was heartily glad there was something to praise.
“You’ve made a mistake with the soup, Marta; but everything else looks very nice. That meat is done as well as I could do it. Now, in the first place, you were in too great a hurry. The milk and tomato were only to go together the last thing, but that hasn’t caused the milk to curdle. You cannot have read your recipe over as you made it, and have forgotten the soda?”
“No, I put the soda in.”
Molly felt she could not be speaking the truth, but when she tasted the soup, found she was.
“Well, I don’t understand this. Tell me exactly how you did it.”
Marta rehearsed her movements and then it turned out she had put the soda in last, after the tomato, and of course it had curdled before that. She explained this, told her to strain the soup, and then went to prepare the table quickly, for Harry would be home in a minute.