“Now,” said Matron Marguerite, as they returned to the Grotto, “I am going to make up my accounts. I have all the bills that came in to-day, and I have five dollars apiece from each one of you for the first week, though I’m afraid it won’t be enough, and Helen forgot to give me hers anyway, and Betty gave hers to me and then borrowed it back again; and I haven’t paid my own yet either, but I paid out eighty cents for our stage-fares, and twenty-five cents expressage,—no, fifty,—and fourteen cents for two quarts of milk. You see, I didn’t know we were going to have bills, and I almost wish we hadn’t. Oh, yes, and I owe Marjorie thirty-six cents that she paid to the butter-and-egg lady—I mean the club owes it. But I guess I can straighten it all out.”
“You ought to have one of those cash-register things,” said Millicent. “You just play on it with your fingers, and it rings a bell and counts your money for you.”
“I wish I had one,” said Marguerite, who was beginning to be arithmetically bewildered. “But I’ll be all right if you girls will let me alone.”
“We will, we will,” said Nan. “Just remember, Daisy, that two and two make four, and then go ahead. Now _I_’m going to begin our Journal. I brought a grand and elegant new blank-book for the purpose. We must write something in it every day, and we’ll keep it here on the table where anyone can write a page when she feels disposed. What shall we call it? What’s the name of this cottage, Marjorie?”
“Oh, father calls it Fair View, but I don’t think that’s much of a name. Let’s christen it for ourselves.”
“Call it Liberty Hall,” said Jessie, “because we’re going to do just as we like all the time we’re here.”
“Too hackneyed,” returned Betty. “Let’s call it Hilarity Hall, because we’re going to have lots of fun here.”
So Hilarity Hall it was, and Nan printed it in big letters on the fly-leaf of her book. Then she began to scribble, and the others leaned over her shoulder and knelt at her side, and helped and suggested and amended, until the first instalment of the Journal stood thus, and Nan read it aloud, amid a fire of running comment:
“A SEPTEMBER SESSION OF THE BLUE RIBBON COOKING CLUB
“HILARITY HALL, BLUE BEACH, September 21.