RESPONSIBILITY
Really, as Rosie pointed out, the work for Floribel’s and Zeke’s day
out began the morning before. You had to make sure then that there was
enough raw material in the house for the three meals of the next day.
Therefore, early Wednesday morning before they went to market, the
three girls sat down at the typewriter and worked out the program of
their three meals.
“Rosie, you take charge of this first day,” Maida urged, “you’ve had
so much more experience than Laura or me. Don’t you think she ought,
Laura?”
“I certainly do,” Laura agreed with conviction. “Thank goodness,
breakfast is always easy. It’s fruit, and breakfast food and eggs.
Thank goodness too, that fruit grows already made. Just think how much
work it would be if we had to cook oranges and peaches, or if we had
to shell berries. And what a blessing milk is! How nice of the cow to
deliver it all cooked.”
“Well, then,” Rosie began, taking the situation in hand at once, “let’s
start with fruit. Let’s have oranges--”
“Oh let’s!” interrupted Maida excitedly, “I know a perfectly beautiful
way to prepare oranges. You cut the skins into quarters and then into
eighths while they’re still on the orange. You don’t pull them off, but
you turn them back, so that the orange stands in the midst of petals of
its own peel--just like a gold pond-lily.”
“All except Delia’s orange,” Laura put in.
“I notice that Mrs. Dore gives her orange juice. And after she has
squeezed it, she strains it very carefully.”
“All right, Laura,” Rosie agreed again, at once, “you can attend to the
oranges.”
“I think we’d better have prepared breakfast-food this first
breakfast,” Maida suggested. “We are bound to make a lot of mistakes in
cooking; but we can’t hurt anything that just comes out of a box.”
“Yes, you’re right, Maida,” Rosie agreed. “Now, shall we have an
omelette? I know how to cook omelettes. No, I guess we’d better have
boiled eggs. They’re the easiest, and I don’t want to make any mistakes
the first day if possible.”
“Well that settles breakfast,” Maida declared with satisfaction. “Now
what are we going to have for dinner?”
“I’d like to have a fish chowder,” Rosie suggested. “We haven’t had one
this summer. Most everybody likes chowder. And then,” she added with a
smile, “it’s the only thing I know how to cook.”
“Then we’ll have it, Rosie,” Maida decided.
“I’ll teach you to how to make chowder if you like,” Rosie offered.
“Oh will you, Rosie?” Maida asked ecstatically. “I love fish chowder.
I’ve never in all my life had enough. How I would enjoy making it.”
“And then,” Rosie continued, “for dessert, we’ll have a bread pudding.
It’s the only pudding I know how to make.”
Laura drew a long breath, “What’ll we eat next Thursday?” she asked in
a serious tone. “I don’t know how to cook anything but popovers and
custards and cake. Maida doesn’t know how to cook anything at all. And
you are cooking, this first Thursday, everything you know.”
Rosie sighed too. “Well we’ll consider next Thursday when it comes,”
she decided wisely, “and besides Granny and Mrs. Dore or Floribel will
teach us how to cook anything--they said they would. And now we come to
supper.”
However supper was not so easy for Laura as for the other two,
because Rosie immediately decided that Laura should make some of her
one-two-three-four cake. The rest of the meal was to be bread and
butter, some of the preserves left over from the year before, with
which the house was richly provided; and great pitchers of milk.
“We’ve got to do the cooking for this whole day ourselves,” Maida
sighed. “There isn’t a thing in which the boys can help us.”
“No,” Rosie admitted regretfully, “and I wanted to make them work too.
Next week,” she added, “they’ll be busy enough because we’ll have ice
cream and they’ll have to turn the freezer.”
The girls pinned up their schedule of meals on the kitchen wall; set
the alarm clock for an incredibly early hour; went to bed at eight,
instead of nine, very serene in their minds.
The record of their first day was probably as good and as bad as that
of most amateur cooks. In the early morning, the little girls moved so
noiselessly about the big kitchen and talked in such low tones that
Mrs. Dore said she had not heard a sound until the breakfast bell rang.
The first two courses of breakfast went off beautifully. Then they
discovered they had boiled the eggs twelve minutes. Granny declared
that they must eat them because eggs were expensive. Perhaps it was
to take away the sting from this mistake that Mrs. Dore remarked that
she had never seen oranges look so beautiful as these--in their curled
golden calyxes.
When it came to luncheon, there were mistakes again; but not such
serious ones. Rosie’s chowder was hot and perfectly delicious; only
there wasn’t enough of it. Rosie herself nobly went without; but the
children clamored for more. On the other hand, she had made enough
bread pudding for a family twice their size. Here the boys eagerly came
to the rescue and demanded three helpings each.
Supper was very successful. Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore congratulated
Rosie warmly upon it.
“Well I didn’t make any mistakes for this meal,” Rosie said dryly,
“because there wasn’t anything that I cooked.”
However Granny continued to praise the three tired little girls.
“It’s foine little cooks you’ll make,” she prophesied.
In the glow that this praise developed, they washed and wiped the
dishes, chattering like magpies. And then, following the impulse which
emerged from that happy glow, they cleaned up Floribel’s kitchen;
re-arranged and re-decorated it.
They re-arranged and re-decorated to such good purpose that, the next
day, Floribel said privately to Mrs. Dore. “It sho do look beautiful.
Ah’se never seen a kitchen lak it, but Ah can’t find a _single thing_.”