“May I behold, too?” asked the grocer, who stood at the side door. He had heard the laughing half a mile away.
“Yes, sir, this is my cooking school.”
“Well, go on with your lecture. You make a real pretty picture standing there with that rig on.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I was about to remark, it’s truly lamentable, the ignorance of girls and women! They put the currants in first and then the sugar, and the juice spills out all over the oven.—See, here is the oven ready. What have you been thinking of, girls, to let that fire go out?”
“You see how he acts, Mr. Fowler,” said Sadie, as Lucy put wood in the stove.
“But, as I was saying—sugar first, then currants, and the juice stays in. Bring some water to pour in, Flaxie.”
“Can’t I hire you to come and show my women folks how to cook?” said the grocer, laughing at the notion of placing sugar below currants.
But there was reason in the “notion,” as the event proved, for the juice did “stay in,” and the pie would have done Preston great credit, if it had not been trifled with in the oven, like all the Camp Comfort baking. But it was far superior to Lucy’s spider-pie, and a vote was taken on the spot for a change of cooks.
Preston was jubilant, for was not this his second victory for the day?
The weather was sultry, and after dinner everybody would gladly have reclined in the hammocks under the shade, if Lucy had not suddenly remembered that ice-cream always suggests cake. Lemon-cake was made and burned; but the ice-cream party did not come off on account of a heavy shower which rose about six o’clock.