Winona of the Camp Fire Part 15

"I'm wid yez," called Louise back from the gas-range, where she was doing something with sugar and water. "Bessie goes back, too."

Winona got the chopping-machine, divided a big stalk of celery with Adelaide, made another excursion to the shelf over the ice-box for some peppers and onions, and began to grind her beefsteak.

"Croquettes?" inquired Louise curiously.

"No, scalloped meat," answered Winona. "The croquettes won't go as far, and there'll be the cream gravy extra, and we'll need milk for the cocoa. Besides, the deep fat to fry them would be another horrible extravagance."

She put in a layer of meat as she spoke, then the ground celery and peppers and seasoning, and a generous layer of bread-crumbs.

"But aren't celery and peppers an extravagance, too?" put in Adelaide, looking faintly interested. She was the only one of the four girls not busy. She had not started on her salad.

"They would be if they weren't in the house," said Winona carelessly, "though I don't think they are costly this time of year. But I'm using them for their bulk. Mother flavors with celery seed when celery's too high."

She continued to build up her edifice of meat and crumbs and so forth, and finally drenched it with cold water and put it in the oven.

"Be careful of my cake when you look at your meat," reminded Helen, coming and tucking her spice-cake in beside the meat as she spoke. "How are you getting on, Adelaide?"

"Not at all," said Adelaide ashamedly. "I don't believe I know how to make salads."

"Come help me set the table, then," invited Helen.

"All right," said Adelaide, getting up slowly from her kitchen chair, and flinging her long, untidy braids back over her shoulders.

"No, Helen, please!" said Winona. "Let me show Adelaide. I think we can make a perfectly lovely salad in a few minutes."

"All right, Winnie!" said Helen cheerfully, and vanished into the dining-room alone.

"I don't see how!" said Adelaide. "I thought you had to have chicken or lobster or such things for salad-and I'm sure I'd curdle the dressing."

"Of course you will if you expect to," said Louise, setting her syrup on to boil, and beginning to pare and quarter apples and drop them in cold water so they wouldn't brown. "Why don't you make boiled dressing?"

"I didn't know about it," said Adelaide.

"Good gracious!" said Louise. "How on earth do you manage at your house?"

"Well, there's just father and Lonny and France and I, and mostly father brings home things from the delicatessen. And sometimes we roast meat and just eat at it till it's gone. I'm not old enough to know much about housekeeping, father says. But Lonny cooks sometimes."

Winona and Louise both stared at her.

"I'd go crazy," said Louise frankly. "I should think you'd get so you never wanted to eat anything."

"Anyway, you can 'try this on your piano' when you go home," Winona threw in hastily, giving Louise a furtive, if thorough, pinch as she pa.s.sed her, for she had seen Adelaide color up. "Boiled dressing's easy.

You know how to make drawn b.u.t.ter, don't you-white sauce?"

"Oh, yes," said Adelaide, rising.

"Well," explained Winona, "when you melt the b.u.t.ter in the pan to mix with the flour, you add some mustard, just a pinch, and salt and pepper.

Then when you've put in the flour, and the milk, and it's just going to thicken, you put in the yolk of an egg. When it's cold you thin it with vinegar. That isn't hard, is it?"

Adelaide was swiftly following directions as Winona talked.

"Thin the egg with milk, and beat it a little-that's right," said Winona. "There-now take it off. The egg only wants to cook a minute.

Now all you have to do is wait till it cools and add the vinegar, and-there's your dressing!"

"Why, it isn't a bit hard!" said Adelaide wonderingly.

"Nor a bit expensive," said Winona. "As for the salad, you can make salad out of any kind of vegetable that will cut up."

"Let me see if I can work it out alone," said Adelaide.

She washed the lettuce and set it on the individual salad plates Helen found for her. Then she began to combine peas and beets and celery quite as if she knew how.

Winona watched her for a minute, then went over to see what Louise was doing. While she had been helping Adelaide Louise's syrup had cooked enough to have the quartered apples dropped into it, and now it was bubbling on the back of the stove. Just as Winona came over Louise took off the apples, cooked through, but not to the point of losing their shape, and put them outdoors to cool. Then she turned her attention to the baked potatoes of yesterday.

She had heated them through, and now she cut off the tops and scooped out the inside, and was mixing it with milk and b.u.t.ter and a little onion, and beating it till it was creamy.

"They're harder to do than if they were fresh," she said, pounding vigorously, "but I guess they'll come out all right, when they've been browned a minute."

"They'll be browned just about the time my scalloped meat's done,"

responded Winona, dropping to her knees before the oven. "Oh, Helen, come take out your cake! It's all done-I've tried it with a straw."

"Oh, it isn't burned, is it?" cried Helen, das.h.i.+ng in.

It wasn't. She put it on the shelf over the range, to keep warm, and headed a party bound upstairs to tidy up.

"You didn't set places for those little taggers?" called Louise to Helen on the way up.

"Not at our table," said Helen.

CHAPTER NINE

When the four girls came down and put on the supper they found a surprise waiting for them. Beside the large table the little sewing-table had been moved in, spread with a white cloth and set; and around it, very flushed and important, sat Florence, Bessie Lane, Frances Hughes, and Edith Hillis's little sister Lucy. Before Frances, who was the oldest, sat a big dish of creamed potatoes, a platter of Hamburg steak, and in front of each girl steamed a bowl of tomato soup.

"Well, where--" began everybody. All the small sisters answered at once.

"We cooked 'em on the gas-stove in the back parlor!"

"All but the soup," added conscientious little blonde Lucy. "We dumped that out of a can."

"Well, we cooked it, too, didn't we?" inquired Frances.

"So that was what was in the package Puppums wanted!" said Winona.

"Where _is_ Puppums, anyway?" she added as she set down her scalloped meat.