"They'll keep perfectly, of course."
"Would your mother let us have the receipt now so we could be practicing it to make some too?" asked Dorothy.
"I'm sure she'd be delighted," and Margaret ran off to get her mother's manuscript cook book from which Dorothy copied the following receipt:
"Fruit Cake
| "½ cup butter |
| ¾ cup brown sugar |
| ¾ cup raisins, chopped |
| ¾ cup currants |
| ½ cup citron, cut in small pieces |
| ½ cup molasses |
| 2 eggs |
| ½ cup milk |
| 2 cups flour |
| ½ teaspoon soda |
| 1 teaspoon cinnamon |
| ½ teaspoon allspice |
| ¼ teaspoon nutmeg |
| ¼ teaspoon cloves |
| ½ teaspoon lemon extract or vanilla |
"Sift the flour, soda and spices together. Beat the eggs, add the milk to them. Cream the butter, add the sugar gradually, add the molasses, the milk and egg, then the flour gradually. Mix the fruit, sift a little flour over it, rub it in the flour, add to it the mixture. Add the extract. Stir and beat well. Fill greased pans two-thirds full. Bake in a moderately hot oven one and a quarter hours if in a loaf. In small sizes bake slowly twenty to thirty minutes."
"I'm ready to hear what Tom's got to offer," said James, leaning back luxuriously in his chair after the remains of the feast had been taken away.
"Mine is a paper-cutting scheme," responded Tom. "Perhaps it won't come easy to everybody, but on a small scale I'm something of a paper cutter myself."
"Dull edged?" queried Roger.
"Hm," acknowledged Tom. "I can't illustrate 'Cinderella' like the man Della saw, but I can cut simple figures and I want to propose one arrangement of them to this august body."