Peel onions of about the same size, and drop them in a kettle of boiling, salted water; when they have cooked half an hour, throw this water away and put them in fresh boiling water. This will prevent their being too strong. Cook for one hour altogether. Put melted butter, pepper, and salt over them.
Before they could possibly think it was time to go home, their vacation was over.
For dinner, the last night, Father Blair made something very good indeed:
1/2 pound of dried prunes. 8 slices of bread, cut thin and buttered. 1/2 cup of sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter.
Wash the prunes and cover them with cold water, and let them stand all night. In the morning, put them on the fire in this water, and cook slowly till they are very soft; then take out the stones. Line a dish with the bread, cut in pieces, with a layer on the bottom; put on a spoonful of prunes and juice, then a layer of bread, and so on till the dish is full, with bread on top; sprinkle with sugar and bits of butter and bake brown.
"My, but we've had a good time!" said Jack, thoughtfully rubbing the end of his sunburned nose as he watched the shores of the lake fade away the next day. "I never supposed it was such fun to camp. And I've become quite a cook; now haven't I, Father Blair?"
"I should say you had. Too bad your mother and the girls can't know about it. But they will never know!" and his father smiled mischievously.
"Well, perhaps some day I'll cook something for them," said Jack, sheepishly. "I don't mind knowing how to cook as much as I thought I should, now that I know men cook. I guess I'll surprise them some day, Father!"
Norah was preserving peaches. The fragrant odor filled the house one day, and Mildred sniffed it delightedly. "Dear me! I wish I could make preserves," she sighed. "Norah's always look so lovely in their jars, and they taste so good, too. I wonder if she would let me help her?"
But no, Norah would not. Peaches, she explained, must be done up very carefully, and nobody could do them up unless they knew just how.
[Illustration: "'But Norah, if You can't begin till You know how, how does Anybody ever Learn?'"]
"But, Norah, if you can't begin till you know how, how does anybody ever learn? And I want to do them so much! Just see how beautiful yours are," and Mildred looked longingly at the row of jars on the kitchen table full of yellow peaches in a syrup like golden sunshine. "Oh, Norah!" she murmured pathetically.
