“There are four of you,” said their Guardian. “There’s the table to set, salad and dressing to make, meat and potatoes to prepare, and dessert. Cocoa and cake, too. You’re welcome to anything in the ice-box, but the game is to get supper without buying anything extra, unless something like bread or sugar gives out—some staple.”
“That will be more fun,” said Winona, who had had some experience lately with cooking. “It’s much more interesting thinking out ways to make things out of other things, than when you cook straight ahead!”
Adelaide stared as if Winona had said a very strange thing. But then Adelaide always did look at Winona more or less that way.
“I think the most fun is eating out of paper bags,” said Louise. “No washee dishee. However, I only think that—I wouldn’t dare say it. How’ll we divide?”
“Decide that yourselves,” said Mrs. Bryan.
“Let’s see what there is in the ice-box, first,” Winona suggested prudently, when Mrs. Bryan had left them alone. So they investigated.
“Eight large baked potatoes!” counted Louise. “How on earth did you miscalculate so badly as that, Helen, or are they there for our special benefit?”
“No, it just happened,” said Helen. “Father was going to bring a friend home to dinner last night, and neither of them could get here after all.”
There was also a large piece of cooked beefsteak, a head of lettuce, a dish of cooked peas and some beets. There were other things in the ice-box as well, but these were what the girls chose. They brought some apples up from down cellar, too, and stacked them in a row on the table with the other things.
“Now, Nannie said that the game was to use as many leftovers as possible and do everything as inexpensively as we could and yet have everything taste good and not seem warmed over,” said Helen.
“That’s something a lot of grown-up women never do,” said Louise. “My aunt——”
Mrs. Bryan came from the living-room to say. “I’ll show you anything you don’t know about, girls, but you must do the actual work yourselves, or you won’t know how.”
“Yes!” said Louise. “Choose your poison, Ladies and Gentlemen!” She pulled her cooking-cap close down over her hair. “I’m going to do the potatoes. I think I know how to fix them.”