Holiday Stories for Young People | Page 9

fire for the final rising.
"Bread is nicer made in little loaves," she told us. "More convenient for use on the table, easier to bake, and less likely to become dry."
And now let me give you a receipt for Ingleside waffles. Mother considers these very good, and so do we girls who have tried them.
"Make one pint of Indian meal into mush the usual way, which is by stirring the meal into boiling water and letting it boil until it is thick. While hot put in a small lump of butter and a dessertspoonful of salt. Set the mush aside to cool. Beat separately the whites and yolks of four eggs until very light; add the eggs to the mush, and cream in by degrees one quart of wheat flour; add half a pint of buttermilk or sour cream, in which you have dissolved a half-teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda; add sweet milk enough to make a thin batter.
"Have the waffle-irons hot. They should be heated in advance, not to keep the batter waiting. Butter them thoroughly and half fill them with the batter. Bake over a quick fire."
I never eat waffles without thinking of a pleasant home where two girls and a boy who read this paper have good times every summer. They often go out on the bay for an afternoon sail, and come home in the rosy sunset in time for waffles. Waffles, with sugar and cream, are a very nice addition to a supper table.
Another receipt of Miss Muffet's:
_Delicious Corn Muffins._--One pint of corn meal sifted, one egg, one pint of sweet milk, a teaspoonful of butter, and half a teaspoonful of salt. Pour this mixture into muffin-rings and bake in a very quick oven.
This receipt is one that mother sometimes uses on a cold winter evening when she has nothing else hot for supper. They are great favorites in our household.
CHAPTER IV.
HOW TO SWEEP.
In the first chapter of this story I spoke of the trouble housekeepers in Bloomdale had to get and keep good servants.
We Clover Leaf girls made up our minds that we would learn to be independent. We resolved to know how to do every sort of housework, so that we might assist our mothers whenever they needed us, and be ready for any emergency as it came along.
Aunt Hetty's daughter-in-law in Boston sent the poor old soul a letter which made her rather uneasy, and grandmamma thought that I might better let her go and pay Sally a visit while mother was away than to wait till her return.
"The fall dressmaking and cleaning will be coming on then," said grandmother, "and thee will be busy with school again. So if Hetty takes her vacation now, she will be here to help the dear mother then."
I agreed to this, for the chance of having the kitchen to myself was very tempting. The club was charmed; they said they would just live at our house and help me with all their might.
"Then you won't have Hetty's moods to worry you," said Veva, consolingly.
We had a good time. Nevertheless it was a happy day for me when Aunt Hetty, bag and baggage, came home a week sooner than she was expected. Nobody was looking for her; but the good old soul, having seen her relations, felt restless, and wanted to get home.
"Somefin done tole me, honey," she said, "that Aunt Hetty am wanted hyar, and sure enuf it's so. Yo' pa an' ma off on dey trabbles, and nobody but one pore lamb lef' to take car' ob de house an' de ole madam. I wouldn't hab gone only for dat no-account Sal anyhow."
I felt like a bird set free from a cage when Aunt Hetty appeared, and she came in the very nick of time, too, for that same day up rolled the stage, and out popped my great-aunt Jessamine (grandmamma's sister) from Philadelphia. The two old ladies had so much to tell one another that they had no need of me. So I went to the Downings', where the club was to hold a meeting, armed with brushes and brooms, taking a practical lesson in sweeping and dusting.
The Downings were without a maid, and we all turned in to help them. Alice, Nell, and Clem, the older sisters, accepted our offer joyfully, though I think their mother had doubts of the wisdom of setting so many of us loose in her house at once. But Linda Curtis and Jeanie Cartwright found that they were not needed and went home; Veva had a music lesson and was excused; Linda's mamma had taken her off on a jaunt for the day; and Amy could not be spared from home. Only Lois and I were left to help Marjorie, and, on the principle that many hands make