Then they decided to try some cake. Patty, and Johnny, who was always ready to help, knit their brows and puzzled their brains over the recipes. Johnny volunteered to read the directions from the cook-book, while Patty measured and mixed the ingredients.
He read, "'Four eggs, two cups sugar—'"
"Stop, Johnny—don't read so fast. I wonder if the eggs ought to be beaten?"
"Course they ought to; sh'd think any goose'd know that," said Johnny, contemptuously.
"I don't believe they ought to be; the recipe doesn't say anything about beating." So the eggs were broken in with the sugar, and they were stirred together. Then the butter—a liberal quantity—and milk and flour. "'Two tea-spoons cream-tartar; flavor to taste,'" read Johnny.
At length the cake was in the oven, and they watched and waited for it to rise. But it never rose. The fire was made quick; then it was allowed to burn slower; still the cake was an inch below the top of the pan. More than an hour passed, then Patty took it from the oven. What could be the trouble? It was as heavy as lead. Johnny read the recipe over again carefully. "'One tea-spoonful soda'—that's the trouble, Pat; we forgot the soda."
Katie was the most unfortunate of the housekeepers. If she trimmed the lamps, she was sure to spill the oil; if she cooked the dinner, in spite of her wisest precautions it was sure to be burned. And Johnny used laughingly to warn her against looking at stakes, or nails, or twigs, as a rent in her dress was sure to be the result.
Then there was Nan. She did so hate dish-washing! Sometimes, if in the very midst of hot water and rattling crockery, she saw her girl friends outside at play, away she would go, not thinking again of her unfinished task until returning, perhaps half an hour afterward, she would find the towels wet and the water cold in the pan.
And it must be confessed that sometimes even Patty herself would drop her broom, and at the same time her dignity, and join the children, as eager as any of them, forgetful of the dinner hour and the uncooked dinner.
But the sewing—making the clothes—was the worst. Patty was so proud that she would not ask help from anybody—no, not if she ruined her eyes, and worked her fingers to the bone. Garments were picked to pieces, stitch by stitch, to learn how they were made. Dresses were puzzled over, and pulled this way and that; a little cut off here and a piece sewed on there to make them fit.