Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer — Part 73

Nathalie pursed up her lips and then broke into a “Tru-al-lee!”

Helen glanced down quickly, her eyes lighted, and then came a quick Bob White call that sounded much like “More wet! More wet!” In another instant she was down on the porch calling merrily to her friend, “Oh, Nathalie, how are you this morning?”

Nathalie dimpled cheerily. “Oh, fine!” making a dab at her eyes, “but at my wits’ end trying to make a fire. Will you tell me why it will insist upon going out? It is maddening! I have lighted it six times.”

“What, you making a fire?” said Helen, and then, “Just wait a moment and I will come over and see what is wrong.”

Under Helen’s nimble fingers the brown paper was taken out, the fire-pot filled with loosely wrapped newspaper, small sticks laid crisscross, a few larger ones on top, and then a match applied. Like magic the tiny blue flame sputtered, caught hold of an edge of paper, and then in a few moments a blazing fire was seething and swirling. Nathalie, in exuberant joy, seized her friend and the two girls waltzed merrily around the kitchen.

Of course Nathalie knew how to make toast, but when Helen showed her how to hold it over the coals until it was a golden-brown, butter it while hot, and then cut off the scraggly edges and a rim of crust, she realized that toast-making was indeed a domestic science. Scrambled eggs came next, simple, but deliciously done, as her friend showed her. Then came putting the coffee in the percolator with the water heated beneath by the tiny alcohol lamp, thus drawing from the beverage the most nutritious qualities, Helen declared, without injuring one’s digestion.

But the grape-fruit—that was another new thing learned—was prepared the way Helen said a trained nurse had taught her, one time when her mother was ill. It was cut in half, the pulp dug out with a spoon into a cup or saucer, and after the pith had been removed, chopped finely, returned to shell, and then sugared and put on the ice. But perhaps the best part of helping Mother that morning was when, after striking the Japanese gong eight bells, Nathalie arrayed herself in Felia’s freshly laundered cap and apron and stationed herself back of her mother’s chair to serve breakfast.