and light and sweet, and tender,
the most delicious morsels, with the amber maple syrup, that she had
ever tasted. She must confess it to herself, they were better than
her mother's; city people could not concoct such amazing cakes as
these; then the fragrant golden butter, how she wished poor Philip
were there to get some of all these good things.

She had not proposed that her mother-in-law should know that there
was anything in the universe that she was ignorant of in the
housekeeping line, but now she resolved to lay down all her pride and
learn whatever she could, so she followed mother Thorne as she
trotted in and out from pantry to kitchen, initiating herself into
the mysteries of this and that dish, and storing up many a lesson of
housewifely skill. It all came out after a little; the struggle she
had been through with those "horrible cakes." Father Thorne laughed
until the tears came, to hear his pretty daughter-in-law naively
narrate her many grievous failures in that line, enlarging not a
little on Philip's wry faces, when he tried to eat her cakes to save
her feelings. She had confessed it all, now she felt free to watch
the process of "setting the cakes" and to ask all the questions she
pleased.

"What made mine so horribly bitter once?" she asked.

"Why, you put too much yeast in, I suppose."

"I only put in a teacupful," said Ruey.

Then mother Thorne shook her sides with laughter, as she said:

"Why, child, that ought to make cakes enough for two dozen people;
you only need about two table-spoonfuls for the quantity you would
make."

"What made them run all over creation when I left them by the fire to
rise?"

"Why, maybe you didn't have room enough for them to rise, and they
must go somewhere, you know."

"What made them sour?"

"They stood too long after they got light, before they were baked.
Very likely they would have raised in time, if you had left them on
the table, say."

"What do you do when they are sour?" asked Ruey.

"Put in a little soda."

"I did. I put soda in, and you never saw such looking things as they
were, yellow and spotted, and ugh! how they tasted. Philip nearly
choked himself on one of the lumps of soda in his cake."

"Don't you know," said mother Thorne, indulging in another laugh,
"that you must not put in but a little, and you must dissolve that in
a spoonful of warm water and then stir it in?"

Ruey studied those cakes as thoroughly as she ever had a pro