“It is perfectly dreadful,” she exclaimed, “that I don’t know the first thing about cooking! What am I to do? I went into the kitchen determined that that odious B. Lafferty should never suspect that I hadn’t made biscuits every day of my life, but I couldn’t have impressed her that way, for she stood looking at me with the most supercilious expression. She insisted upon taking the dough and the roller right out of my hands. She declared that she knew better than I did about making them, and the worst of it was, I didn’t know whether she did or not, and these are the result. Hear them!”
Honor lifted one of the biscuits and let it drop upon the table. It sounded like the fall of a little stone.
“You will have to take cooking lessons,” said Katherine. “They don’t really cost much, and it would pay in the end.”
“They may not cost much, but when we have scarcely a cent in our pockets and owe bills, we can’t afford lessons in anything. No, I shall have to keep a sharp lookout on the bread-box, and trust to luck about other things. I am afraid she only knows how to make two puddings, for when I speak about the dessert, there is always some reason why it must be either cornstarch or tapioca. I am perfectly certain they are the only kinds she can make.”
“Why not give up having dessert?” suggested Victoria, as she adjusted the cover of the basket. “It would save a little money.”
“Victoria!” exclaimed her sisters together.
“We are coming down pretty low, if we can’t have dessert,” said Katherine. “What are you thinking of?”
“Only of saving money; and a lamp on the supper table would be cheaper than candles,” said Vic, as she took up the basket and left the room. “Come, Sophy. You carry the pitcher of milk. Don’t spill it, child.”
“I don’t know where Vic gets those scrimpy ideas,” said Katherine, when they had gone. “She actually said again to-day that she thought we could do without salad, that the sweet oil for the dressing was so expensive; and when we went to Boston together the other day, she insisted upon walking all the way from the station to Aunt Sophia’s, just to save five cents! She was perfectly horrified at my getting those embroidered handkerchiefs, and yet they were so cheap. It is a perfect bore to have her so.”
Honor said nothing. She thought that Victoria went to an extreme, perhaps; but it was better for the family purse than Katherine’s course, and the suggestion about the candles contained a good deal of common sense. A lamp would do just as well, and candles were expensive; but then they made the table look so much prettier. How provoking it was, thought Honor, to be obliged to do without so small and simple a luxury as candles on the supper-table!