“There isn’t a thing in the house to roast,” said Winona, “and this time of year you have to telephone early to get things.” She moved to the telephone, and pulled herself back in dismay. “This is Wednesday!” she said. “And all the shops are closed Wednesday afternoon!”
“It isn’t afternoon, yet,” said Louise.
“Look at the clock,” said Winona.
And it was afternoon—one o’clock.
“Perhaps that’s a stray butcher,” said Louise, as they heard a long, loud knock at the kitchen door.
But it was only Billy Lee, who explained that he had tried every door but this in vain. He had a note to Winona from his sister. He perched himself on the stationary tubs while she read it, on the chance that she might want to write an answer.
“Come over and stay with me this afternoon,” it said. “I have a headache.”
“Oh, I can’t, Billy!” explained Winona, looking up from the note. “We have dinner to get for two ministers and their wife, and—Billy, you have a great deal of steady common sense. I heard father say so. What would you do if there wasn’t any meat, or any time to get any, or any place to get it?”
Billy tucked his foot under him, and looked serious, mechanically taking a sandwich as he thought. The girls were eating them, too, for it had been silently agreed that that would be all the lunch they would bother with.
“Why not try Puppums?” he suggested. “If they’re missionaries they’re used to roast dog. Every missionary has to learn to like it in the last year of his course.”