"Why, how perfectly lovely! We will have a real Eastern dinner after all," cried Mrs. Starr.
"An dat ain't all dere is to it, nuther! Mike, he's gone duck shootin' to-day an 'spects to bring back several brace of ducks to hep out on de turkeys," said Cookee, grinning at the way he gave away Mike's secrets for Christmas dinner.
"We'd better save the venison steak for New Year's, then," suggested Mrs. Latimer.
"Huh, huh! I will," replied Cookee, who was a favored mortal in camp, for timber-jacks could do without sleep but not without food.
"Now's we got the juice done, an' the cakes baked, I'll jes' show you what I done made fer the feast," said Cookee, leading the ladies into a lean-to shed that he had built up against the cabin, to store his cooked foods safely away from men and children.
In the spare minutes between meals when he had to cook and serve food for more than fifty hungry men, Cookee had delighted in baking cookies of every conceivable shape. These were for the children.
From the ankle bones and hoofs of the deer he had boiled out the jelly and flavored it with lemon and nutmeg and made a mould of jelly that looked exactly like calf's-foot jelly, but tasted much better. It shook upon its platter like the showpiece in any caterer's window.
He had cored large apples, and, with a concoction of beaten eggs, molasses, nuts and a bit of mint to flavor it, filled the gaps and baked them. The apples were soft and shiny when they came forth from the oven, and immediately, Cookee poured some melted sugar over them and allowed them to crystallize in the cold.
Several other unique side dishes had been made by the ingenious cook, and the ladies were most generous in their praise.
For several nights preceding Christmas Eve, the children had been sent to bed as soon as supper was over, to give the elders plenty of time to string pop-corn, make paper trimmings, and arrange generally for the great tree they were to have in the clearing if the day was fair, or in the dining-room if it stormed.