"Isn't boiling water boiling water?" asked Roger, who was listening.

"There's boiling water _and_ boiling water," smiled his mother. "Water for tea should be freshly drawn so that there are bubbles of air in it and it should be put over the fire at once. When you are waiting for it to boil you should scald your teapot so that its coldness may not chill the hot water when you come to the actual making of the tea."

"Do I seem to remember a rule about using one teaspoonful of tea for each person and one for the pot?" asked Tom.

"That is the rule for the cheaper grades of tea, but the better grades are so strong that half a teaspoonful for each drinker is enough."

"Then it's just as cheap to get tea at a dollar a pound as the fifty cent quality."

"Exactly; and the taste is far better. Well, you have your teapot warm and your tea in it waiting, and the minute the water boils vigorously you pour it on the tea."

"What would happen if you let it boil a while?"

"If you should taste water freshly boiled and water that has been boiling for ten minutes you'd notice a decided difference. One has a lively taste and the other is flat. These qualities are given to the pot of tea of course."

"That's all news to me," declared James. "I'm glad to know it."

"I used to think 'tea and toast' was the easiest thing in the world to prepare until Dorothy taught me how to make toast when she was fixing invalid dishes for Grandfather after he was hurt in the fire at Chautauqua," said Ethel Brown. "She opened my eyes," and she nodded affectionately at her cousin.

"There's one thing we must learn to make or we won't be true campers,"

insisted Tom.

"What is it? I'm game to make it or eat it," responded Roger instantly.

"Spider cakes."

"Spiders! Ugh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Della daintily.

"Hush; a spider is a frying pan," Ethel Brown instructed her. "Tell us how you do them, Tom," she begged.

"You use the kind of flour that is called 'prepared flour.' It rises without any fuss."

The Ethels laughed at this description, but they recognized the value in camp of a flour that doesn't make any fuss.

"Mix a pint of the flour with half a pint of milk. Let your spider get hot and then grease it with b.u.t.ter or cotton seed oil."

"Why not lard."

"Lard will do the deed, of course, but b.u.t.ter or a vegetable fat always seems to me cleaner," p.r.o.nounced Tom wisely.

"Won't you listen to Thomas!" cried Roger. "How do you happen to know so much?" he inquired amazedly.

"I went camping for a whole month once and I watched the cook a lot and since then I've gathered ideas about the use of fat in cooking. As little frying as possible for me, thank you, and no lard in mine!"

They smiled at his earnestness, but they all felt the same way, for the girls were learning to approve of delicacy in cooking the more they cooked.

"Go ahead with your spider cake," urged Margaret, who was writing down the receipt as Tom gave it.

"When your b.u.t.tered spider is ready you pour in half the mixture you have ready. Spread it smooth over the whole pan, put on a cover that you've heated, and let the cake cook four minutes. Turn it over and let the other side cook for four minutes. You ought to have seen our camp cook turn over his cakes; he tossed them into the air and he gave the pan such a twist with his wrist that the cake came down all turned over and ready to let the good work go on."

"What did he do with the other half of his batter?" asked Ethel Brown, determined to know exactly what happened at every stage of proceedings.

"When he had taken out the first cake and given it to us he put in the remainder and cooked it while we were attacking the first installment."

"Was it good?"

"You bet!"

"I don't know whether we can do it with this tiny fire, but let's try--what do you say?" murmured Ethel Brown to Ethel Blue.

"We ought to have trophies of our bow and spear," Roger suggested when he was helping with the furnishing arrangements.

"There aren't any," replied Ethel Brown briefly, "but d.i.c.ky has a gla.s.s bowl full of tadpoles; we can have those."

So the tadpoles came to live in the cave, carried out into the light whenever some one came and remembered to do it, and as some one came almost every day, and as all the U.S.C. members were considerate of the needs and feelings of animals as well as of people, the tiny creatures did not suffer from their change of habitation.

d.i.c.ky had taken the frogs' eggs from the edge of a pool on his grandfather's farm. They looked like black dots at first. Then they wriggled out of the jelly and took their place in the world as tadpoles.

It was an unfailing delight to all the young people, to look at them through a magnifying gla.s.s. They had apparently a round head with side gills through which they breathed, and a long tail. After a time tiny legs appeared under what might pa.s.s as the chin. Then the body grew longer and another pair of legs made their appearance. Finally the tail was absorbed and the tadpole's transformation into a frog was complete.

All this did not take place for many months, however, but through the summer the Club watched the little wrigglers carefully and thought that they could see a difference from week to week.

CHAPTER IX

"NOTHING BUT LEAVES"

When the leaves were well out on the trees Helen held an Observation Cla.s.s one afternoon, in front of the cave.

"How many members of this handsome and intelligent Club know what leaves are for?" she inquired.

"As representing in a high degree both the qualities you mention, Madam President," returned Tom, with a bow, "I take upon myself the duty of replying that perhaps you and Roger do because you've studied botany, and maybe Margaret and James do because they've had a garden, and it's possible that the Ethels and Dorothy do inasmuch as they've had the great benefit of your acquaintance, but that Della and I don't know the very first thing about leaves except that spinach and lettuce are good to eat."

"Take a good, full breath after that long sentence," advised James. "Go ahead, Helen. I don't know much about leaves except to recognize them when I see them."

"Do you know what they're for?" demanded Helen, once again.

"I can guess," answered Margaret. "Doesn't the plant breathe and eat through them?"

"It does exactly that. It takes up food from water and from the soil by its roots and it gets food and water from the air by its leaves."

"Sort of a slender diet," remarked Roger, who was blessed with a hearty appet.i.te.

"The leaves give it a lot of food. I was reading in a book on botany the other day that the elm tree in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, under which Washington reviewed his army during the Revolution was calculated to have about seven million leaves and that they gave it a surface of about five acres. That's quite a surface to eat with!"

"Some mouth!" commented Roger.

"If each one of you will pick a leaf you'll have in your hand an ill.u.s.tration of what I say," suggested Helen.