Spanish Soufflé.—Cut two sponge cakes in slices. Spread apricot or other jam on them. Pile them on a dish, squeeze the juice of a lemon over them. Whip three teaspoonfuls of cream up with the white of one egg to a froth; put it over the cakes; blanch and chop four almonds; put them in the oven to colour, then sprinkle over the whip, and serve.
A DREAM OF QUEEN'S GARDENS.[1]
A STORY FOR GIRLS.—IN TWO PARTS.
By DANIEL DORMER, Author of "Out of the Mists."
PART I.
A PRETTY QUEEN.
"Any letter for me this morning, Brightie?"
Hazel is leaning rather perilously over the banisters, trying to catch a glimpse of the old woman coming slowly up the stairs far below.
"Yes—one. Don't come for it, I'm coming up. And pray, child, don't hang over those rickety rails like that."
Miss Bright, or "Brightie," as Hazel Deane had grown affectionately to call her, is a heavy, strongly-made woman of sixty-three years. She finds the stairs in this house in Union-square, where she and Hazel lodge, rather trying; they are many and steep, so she pauses half-way to recover breath. Looking up she sees Hazel, a white, dark-eyed face, and a form so slender that even those unsafe rails could hardly give way under so slight a weight. "More than ever like one of my Cape jasmine stars," thinks old Brightie. She has always mentally compared the girl to one of those pure, white stars, which she used so specially to love, shining on their invisible stems, amidst the dark green leaf-sprays at her sister's home. Oh, how the poor, lonely old woman's heart had ached for that country home of her younger days, as she sat wearily at her business of plain sewing day after day in her attic in Union-square!
And Hazel, looking down, saw her one friend in the world. A ray of sunlight streamed in through the narrow staircase window on to Miss Bright. It makes the black cap which covers her whole head, with strings flying back over her shoulders, look very rusty. It makes her old alpaca gown, patched and repatched, and the little black silk apron that she wears, look more than ever shiny. It strikes upon the large, old-fashioned white pearl buttons down the front of her bodice, and upon the glasses of her spectacles, till she looks like some strange, black creature staring all over with big, round eyes. To Hazel's affectionate mind, however, there is nothing in the least ludicrous in the sight. She only notes the panting breath, and says, with a touch of impatience in her anxiety—
"Why will you persist in toiling up and down those horrid stairs, instead of sending me, Brightie? It is really very unkind of you."