"Yes, ma'am," said Eleanor, "Mary Frances has been giving me a cooking lesson."

Mary Frances shook her head and put her finger to her mouth, but Eleanor didn't understand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Oh, isn't this good."]

"A cooking lesson!" exclaimed Aunt Maria. "A cooking lesson! Mary Frances! A cooking lesson!"

Then she began to laugh.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Then she began to laugh.]

"Oh, my dear!" she said. "I'm so happy I'm crying. Silly old me!" and she wiped the tears from her spectacles.

"Mary Frances, dear," she said, at length, "I heard about the lovely things you made Mary Ann Hooper; and I found out, too, by wheedlin' it out of her, about the cooking lessons--and here's a surprise for you,"

and she handed the bundle to the little girl.

"Oh, Aunt Maria!" cried Mary Frances unwrapping it. "Look, Eleanor!--a little cap and ap.r.o.n!"

"To wear at your cooking lessons," fluttered Aunt Maria.

"How dear and lovely!" (Trying them on.) "Look, Eleanor, they just fit!"

"You're the happiest girl in the world!" sighed Eleanor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A little cap]

"I should be, if Mother were really well," said Mary Frances; "but she's much better, and is coming home soon. Aunt Maria," she added,--"oh, I want you to share the secret! I'm doing all the lessons she had written out for me in my cook book--to surprise her when she comes home!"

"Good!" said Aunt Maria. "I'll tell you!--you can get dinner ready the day she comes!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: and ap.r.o.n.]

"Wouldn't that be perfectly lovely!" said Mary Frances.

Then, suddenly thinking,--

"Oh, Aunt Maria, excuse me, please! Won't you have some of our lesson?--Some of the Apple Snow we made for our lesson, I mean?"

"I'd ap-pre-ci-ate the kindness," said the old lady a little stiffly, as though a bit ashamed of her softness a moment ago. But after tasting the treat, she said:

"It's the most beautiful snow I ever saw, little girls,--even more beautiful than that on which I, so many years ago, used to pull a sled."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Look, Eleanor, they just fit!"]

CHAPTER XXI

THE PICNIC

"CAN'T guess where I'm going to-day," laughed Mary Frances, coming into the kitchen next morning.

"To the circus?" guessed Sauce Pan.

Mary Frances shook her head.

"Not to-day."

"To the fair?" guessed Coffee Pot.

"No!"

"To the Zo-ol-og-ic-al Garden," guessed Sauce Pan, again, beginning to recite:

"'The Pan-Cans went to the Zoo, It long had been their wish To see the Baking Panimals With the wildly Chafing Dish.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "To the circus?"]

"Wrong!" laughed Mary Frances. "All wrong!--Perhaps this will help you guess"--opening the cook book.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Wrong! All wrong!"]

NO. 28.--STUFFED EGGS.

1. Hard-boil eggs.

2. Drop into cold water. Remove sh.e.l.ls.

3. Cut each in half lengthwise.

4. Turn out yolks into a bowl.

5. Carefully place whites together in pairs.

6. Mash yolks with back of a spoon.

7. For every 6 yolks, put into the bowl

1 tablespoon olive oil or melted b.u.t.ter teaspoon mustard (the kind prepared for table) teaspoon salt dash cayenne pepper

8. Rub these together thoroughly with the yolks.

9. Make little b.a.l.l.s of this paste, the size of the yolks.