The breakfast was as bad as a breakfast knew how to be. The girls were all cooks to-day in the exciting preparation for the picnic, for they wanted to take especially tempting dainties in order that they might astonish more experienced providers. Patty scorched the milk toast; Edith, that most precise and careful of all little women under the sun, broke a platter and burned her fingers; Lilia browned a delicious omelet, and waved the spider triumphantly in the air, astonished at her own success, when, alas, the smooth little circlet slipped illnaturedly into the coal hod. Lilia stood still in horror and dismay, while Bell fished it hastily out, looking very crumpled, sooty, shrunken, and generally penitent, if an omelet can assume that expression. She slapped it on the table severely, and said, with a little choke and tear in her voice:
“The last of the eggs went into that omelet, and it is going to he rinsed, and fried over, and eaten. There isn't another thing in the house for breakfast. There is no bread; Alice put cream-of-tartar into the buckwheats, instead of saleratus, and measured it with a tablespoon besides; Miss Miranda's cat upset the milk can; the potatoes are frozen; and I am ashamed to borrow anything more of Grandmother.”
“Never,” cried Alice, with much determination. “Sooner eat omelet and coal hod, too! Never mind the breakfast! there are always apples. What shall we take to the picnic? We can suggest luncheon at high noon, and no one will suspect we haven't breakfasted.”
“Let's make mince pies,” cried Jo, animatedly, from her seat on the wood-box.
“Goose,” answered Bell, with a sarcastic smile. “There's plenty of time to make mince-meat, of course!”
“At any rate, we must have jelly-cake,” said Lilia, with decision, while dishing up the injured omelet for the second time. “We had better carry the delicacies, for Mrs. Pennell and the boys will be sure to bring bread and meat and common things.”
“Oh, tarts, tarts!” exclaimed Edith, in an ecstacy of reminiscence. “I haven't had tarts for a perfect age! Do you think we could manage them?”
“They must be easy enough,” answered Patty, with calm authority. “Cut a hole out of the middle of each round thing, then till it up with jelly and bake it; that's simple.”