g without making any great fuss."

Jack laughed. He knew that Mildred, like himself, was always ready to
have a good time.

"Let's have a Hallowe'en party," he suggested. "Not a sheet and
pillow-case party, either; we've had those till I can't even think of
one without wanting to scream."

"And not one where you bob for apples and walk around the house
backward. I've done both those till I never want to do them again. I
mean some new kind of a party."

But they could not think of anything new that seemed exactly what they
wanted; so the next day they went in to see Miss Betty after school and
asked her about it.

"Why, a chafing-dish party, of course," she said. "That's exactly the
thing to have. You make a lot of indigestible things to eat and then you
go to sleep and dream of ghosts and goblins, and hear shivery noises and
groans and such things--just what you want, on Hallowe'en! I can think
of a lot of awfully good things to have, things warranted to give you
nightmares."

Jack said that suited him exactly, but Mildred was not so sure.

"Don't you think we might have two or three different kinds of things,"
she suggested doubtfully. "Some of them, for the boys, might be pretty
bad; and some others for the girls a lot better. _I_ don't want to dream
of ghosts!"

Miss Betty was willing to do this, but Jack objected. "Be a sport,
Mildred!" he said. "Remember it's Hallowe'en."

"Well, we'll see," she said at last. "Perhaps I'll eat a few dreadful
things just to see what will happen. Now what can we have? I can't use
a chafing dish at all."

"Jack can," Miss Betty said, laughing. Jack's cooking never ceased to be
a joke.

"I? I never cooked in one in my life, except cheese dreams, at the
Dwights'," Jack assured her.

"A chafing dish and a frying-pan are just the same sort of thing, and
you know you learned all about frying-pans in the summer, so now, of
course, you must show what you can do. I'll give you the receipts and
tell you just how to make the things, but you must use a chafing-dish;
if you won't--then, of course, I won't be able to help with the party at
all."

So Jack reluctantly promised to do his part. "Probably I'll spoil things
and make a mess," he grumbled.

But Miss Betty refused to let him off. "Of course you can cook in a
chafing dish," she assured him. "All men can, especially those who can
do camp cooking, and you know you're an expert there, Jack! Now let's
see what we can have."