“I came out of it so well,” said Mrs. Champernom, laughing, “and Mary Flannegan approved the results so well, that when I told her and Ellen Flynn, my waiter girl, that if they liked to go to the cooks’ class, which is a class for special instruction to servant girls, I would pay half, they both consented to go; Mary Flannegan to keep Ellen Flynn company, and to see that she was not taught wrong. The cooks’ class is twelve lessons, and costs three dollars each. I shall pay a dollar and a half for each of them, and as Ellen Flynn is a bright girl, I shall have four good cooks in the house instead of three. For really,” she said, “there is nothing that Hester and Maria can not do. They went down to the beach with their father and the boys, and for a week they cooked everything that was eaten. They made the boys wash the dishes.”
This started Aunt Fanny herself. She found there were four classes she could attend:
1. The Cooks’ Class, for people who had some experience. Twelve lessons would have cost three dollars.
2. The Beginners’ Class of twenty lessons, for which she must pay eight dollars. Here she would be trained to make bread, and to prepare the ordinary dishes for family use at breakfast and dinner and supper.
3. The Second Class, also of twenty lessons, but more advanced. Here she must pay twelve dollars. But here more elegant dishes, what Mrs. Fréchette called “company dishes,” were part of the program.
4. What Mrs. Fréchette called “The Swell Course.” Here every lady paid fifteen dollars for her twenty lessons. Per contra, they had what they cooked, and very jolly parties they seemed to make, when they dared ask their friends to their entertainments.
Aunt Fanny was a good housekeeper, but she thought she should like to astonish her friends at Harris with some of the best seaboard elegancies, so she and Belle entered the “second class.” And pleasant and profitable they found it.