They tidied up the remains of their breakfast, and were soon back at work in the cherry trees. By nine o'clock they had filled four baskets and had stoned more than half, and laid them in a shallow pan with sugar over them "to draw", as Grizzel explained. They cracked the kernels and took out the tiny white nuts, and last of all Grizzel added a good handful of gooseberries.
"That's my idea," she said, "it will help the cherries to jell. I think
I will pop in some red currants too."
"You are clever," Mollie said admiringly. "I never in all my life saw a girl as young as you make jam."
"When I am grown up," Grizzel said, sucking her sugary fingers as she spoke, "I am going to have a fruit-farm and make immense quantities of jam to send home. Grandmamma says our jam is the nicest she has tasted, especially our peach and apricot. I am going to try grape jam too, and I shall preserve mandarin oranges whole, and pineapples, and figs."
Mollie suddenly remembered big tins of jam which used to arrive from Australia now and then, at a time when jam was very scarce and precious in London. She smiled to herself as she wondered if they had been Grizzel's jams—they might have been. At any rate they must have come from beautiful gardens like this.
"If you do," she said to Grizzel, "put a picture of yourself and a cherry tree on the tin. It will look much prettier than 'Campbell's Jams'!"
This made the children laugh, and they went in to their second breakfast feeling very cheerful and what Mollie called "pleased with life". The lazy inventor made his appearance halfway through the meal, looking still rather sleepy. "Come and see my distillery," he said, when breakfast was over, "I fixed it up last night."
Hugh had set the bronchitis-kettle—always carried about with Baby, who was subject to croup—on the fire-place, and had fixed a long narrow jam-tin on to the end of the spout.
"I put the roses and water into the kettle," he explained, "and they boil, and the steam comes out and drops into this cold tin and condenses. Then, when we have enough, we boil that up and condense again. Then we skim the oil that rises to the top, and that is attar of roses. It is perfectly simple."
"It sounds simple," said Mollie, "but—"