RUTH.
"Company coming to-morrow and not a crumb of cake in the house!" said Mrs. Brown one morning. "Jane's gone and there's all the sweeping to do, the baby to take care of, and three meals a day to get!"
"Mother, mother dear," called Ruth from the next room, "do let me make the cake. I should like nothing better. It would be great fun."
"Great fun! Now that is what one says who knows nothing about it. It would be better to go without any cake at all than to place before our friends some that they cannot eat," replied the tired mother.
"When I was at Aunt Fanny's," said Ruth, "she taught me how to make a kind of cake that we all liked. Uncle John said he could eat all I could make. Do let me try, mother dear."
"Oh, Ruth, what a tease you are. Well, it will keep you quiet for a while and I suppose you must learn somehow."
Then Ruth ran into the kitchen in high glee. First she looked at the fire in the stove as Aunt Fanny had taught her to do. More coal was needed. So she had to go down cellar and bring up as much as she could in the hod. She opened the draughts and put on a little coal at first. When that had kindled she put on a little more. She took a whisk and swept out the stove oven. Then she put more water into the kettle on on top of the stove. Soon it was time to close the draughts. She put her hand into the oven to feel how hot it was just as she had seen her Aunt Fanny do.
When the stove was as she wanted it, Ruth ran out to the barn and found four warm eggs in nests among the hay. These she brought into the house, and breaking them into a bowl, began to beat them up quickly. Next she took a yellow dish from the dresser and put into it one cup of butter and two cups of sugar. For a long time she mixed these two together until they were "all one," as she called it.