"Girls, girls," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Gingerbread one, walnut cream cake another. What will you bake, Jean?"
"Orange icing," quoth Jean.
"And sponge cake cream for Elma," she added in a thoughtful way.
"I do like the way you fling all the uninteresting things at me," exclaimed Elma. "I think sponge cake cream is the moistest, flabbiest, silliest cake I know. We're putting cream in everything. Everybody will be sick of cream. Why can't I bake a coffee cake?"
"Why can't she?" asked Mrs. Leighton severely.
"Coffee cake, Elma," said Mabel. She had taken to paper and pencil. "I only hope we shall know what it is when it appears!"
"And you'd better all begin as soon as you can," said Mrs. Leighton; "so that we find out where we are a few days before the party occurs."
She still looked with foreboding on the whole arrangement.
Cook preserved a hauteur on the subject of the invasion, through which the girls found it very hard to break.