“The same thing! Oh, Frederick!” said little Marianne, laughing.
“You may laugh; but I say it is the same sort of thing. Women who are always drawing and reasoning, never know how to make puddings. Mrs. Theresa Tattle said so, when I showed her Sophy’s beautiful drawing yesterday.”
“Mrs. Theresa Tattle might say so,” replied Sophy, calmly; “but I do not perceive the reason, brother, why drawing should prevent me from learning how to make a pudding.”
“Well, I say you’ll never learn how to make a good pudding.”
“I have learned,” continued Sophy, who was mixing her colours, “to mix such and such colours together to make the colour that I want; and why should I not be able to learn to mix flour and butter, and sugar and egg, together, to produce the taste that I want.”
“Oh, but mixing will never do, unless you know the quantities, like a cook; and you would never learn the right quantities.”
“How did the cook learn them? Cannot I learn them as she did?”
“Yes, but you’d never do it exactly, and mind the spoonfuls right, by the recipe, like a cook.”
“Indeed! indeed! but she would,” cried Marianne, eagerly: “and a great deal more exactly, for mamma has taught her to weigh and measure things very carefully: and when I was ill she always weighed the bark in nicely, and dropped my drops so carefully: better than the cook. When mamma took me down to see the cook make a cake once, I saw her spoonfuls, and her ounces, and her handfuls: she dashed and splashed without minding exactness or the recipe, or anything. I’m sure Sophy would make a much better pudding, if exactness only were wanting.”
“Well, granting that she could make the best pudding in the whole world, what does that signify? I say she never would: so it comes to the same thing.”