“Why! it will be great fun,” Ruth said. “Just like playing house together.”
“Say!” cried Agnes. “We want more than ‘play-house’ food to eat—now I warn you! No sweet crackers and ‘cambric tea’ for mine, if you please!”
“Oh! if I ask him,” said Pearl, laughing, “I know Uncle Phil will take us to his boarding-house to supper to-night—if we get there late. But I want to show him what ten girls can do toward housekeeping.”
“There’ll be plenty of cooks to spoil the broth,” sighed Agnes. “Did you ever see me fry an egg?”
Ruth began to laugh. The single occasion when Agnes had tried her hand at the breakfast eggs was a day marked for remembrance at the old Corner House.
“What can you do to a defenseless egg, Aggie?” Lucy Poole demanded.
“Plenty!” declared Agnes, shaking her head. “When I get through with an egg, a lump of butter, and a frying-pan, there is left a residue of charred ‘what is it?’ in the bottom of the pan, an odor of burned grease in the kitchen—and me in hysterics! It was an awful occasion when I tackled that egg. I’ve not felt just right about approaching an egg since that never-to-be-forgotten day.”
“I was left home to cook for my father, once,” said Carrie Poole, seriously, “and he asked to have boiled rice for supper. Mother never let me cook much, and I didn’t know a thing about rice.
“But I saw the grains were awfully small, and I knew my father liked a great, heaping bowlful when he had it, so I told the grocery boy to bring two pounds, and I tried to cook it all.”
A general laugh hailed this announcement. Agnes asked: “What happened, Carrie? I don’t know anything about rice myself—’cepting that it’s good in cakes and you throw it after brides for luck—and—and Chinamen live on it.”