fter everybody is
here and you have said 'How do you do?' to them, you can slip out and
make this, and while it stands you can put the other things on the
table. But perhaps you had better make some coffee too; the men may like
it."

TEA

Fill the kettle with fresh, cold water and let it boil up hard.
Scald out an earthen tea-kettle, and put in two rounded
teaspoonfuls of tea for six people, or more, if you want it quite
strong. Pour on six cups of boiling water and let the pot stand
where it is warm for just two minutes. Scald out the pot you are
going to send to the table, and strain the tea into that. Have a
jug of hot water ready to send in with it.

COFFEE

1 rounded tablespoonful of ground coffee for each person; and
1 extra tablespoonful.
1/2 cup of cold water.
1 egg shell, washed and broken, with a little bit of the white.

Mix these in a bowl. Then put in a very clean pot and add

1 cup of boiling water for each person and
1 cup more.

Let it boil up hard just once; stir it, pour in 1 tablespoonful of
cold water; let it stand three minutes, strain and put in a hot
pot.

[Illustration: She looked Carefully in the Oven Through a Tiny Crack]

Just before the door-bell rang, Mildred went to the refrigerator to look
at her custards and found them nice and cold. Then she looked carefully
in the oven through a tiny crack, and found the muffins were done and
the salmon beautifully brown; so she took up the potatoes, and put them
in the covered dish on the back of the stove where they would keep hot,
and asked Brownie to lay the hot plates around the table, one for each
person. Then she went into the parlor and said "How do you do?" to the
guests, and after a moment slipped out again, and put everything on the
sideboard, made the tea, filled the glasses, and put butter on the
bread-and-butter plates. Then Brownie asked everybody to come to supper.

When they had all sat down, Mildred passed the dish of salmon, offering
it on the left side, of course, just as Norah always did; then she put
the dish down before her father and passed the potatoes and muffins in
the same way, while Mother Blair poured the tea and handed it around
without rising from her seat. And then everybody began to eat, and say,
"Oh, how good this salmon is!" and "Did you ever taste such muffins?"
and "Did you really, really make all these good things yourselves,
ch