There was a new course of study offered the pupils this year. It was called the Cookery Course and was elective, not required. Lydia turned her small nose up at it. She was a good cook, without study, she told herself. But Miss Towne thought differently. She called Lydia into her room one day, early in the term. "Lydia, why don't you take the Cooking Course?"
"I can cook, Miss Towne. I do all our cooking and Daddy says I'm fine at it."
"I know, my dear, but there are other things connected with the Course that you need."
"What things?" asked Lydia, a trine obstinately.
"That's what I want you to find out for yourself. Come, Lydia, take my word for it. It's only two hours a week and no outside study required. If after a term of it, you still think it's useless, why drop it."
So behold Lydia entered in the Cooking Course which was not popular. The mothers of the majority of the girls did not, they said, send their daughters to school to be taught kitchen service. But by the efforts of Miss Towne and one or two other teachers, a dozen children ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, with Lydia as the infant of the class, were enticed into the bright model kitchen in the basement.
It was not long after this that Lydia said to her father, one evening,
"Daddy, I've got to have twenty-five cents."
Amos looked up from his newspaper. "What for, Lydia? A quarter's a good deal of money. Takes me pretty near two hours to earn it."
"I know it," answered Lydia, wincing, "but I've got to buy a nail file. You ought to see my hands compared with the other girls. And you ought to see dirty finger nails under the microscope. The cooking school teacher showed us before we made bread, today."