She came in flushed with heat and pride, the prettiest cook anybody ever saw, with her hair bobbed up out of the way and doing its best to escape, a high-necked white apron, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and an insinuating spot of batter in the dimple of her left cheek. ‘There!’ she cried, joyfully, as she deposited a heaping plate in front of her mother, and set the tin can of maple syrup by its side. ‘Begin on those, and I’ll fry like lightning on two griddles to keep up with you,’ and she rushed to the brush kitchen to turn her next instalments that had been left to brown. Hop Yet had retired to a distant spot by the brook, and was washing dish-towels. All Chinese cooks are alike in their horror of a woman in the kitchen; but some of them will unbend so far as to allow her to amuse herself so long as they are not required to witness the disagreeable spectacle. Bell delicately inserted the cake-turner under the curled edges of the flapjacks and turned them over deftly, using a little too much force, perhaps, in the downward stroke when she flung them back on the griddle. ‘Seems to me they come down with considerable of a thud,’ she said, reflectively. ‘I hope they’re not tough, for I should never hear the last of it. Guess I’ll punch one with the handle of this tin shovel, and see how it acts. Goodness! it’s sort of—elastic. That’s funny. Well, perhaps it’s the way they ought to look.’ Here she transferred the smoking mysteries to her plate, passed a bit of pork over the griddles, and, after ladling out eight more, flew off to the group at the table. ‘Are they good?’ she was beginning to ask, when the words were frozen on her lips by the sight of a significant tableau. The four boys were standing on the bench that served instead of dining-chairs, each with a plate and a pancake on the table in front of them. Jack held a hammer and spike, Scott Burton a hatchet, Geoffrey a saw, and Philip a rifle. Bell was nothing if not intuitive. No elaborate explanations ever were needed to show her a fact. Without a word she flung the plate of flapjacks she held as far into a thicket as she had force to fling it, and then dropped on her knees. “‘Shoot, if you must, this old grey head, But spare my flapjacks, sirs,” she said! ‘What’s the matter with them? Tough? I refuse to believe it. Your tools are too dull,—that’s all. Use more energy! Nothing in this world can be accomplished without effort.’ ‘They’re a lovely brown,’ began Mrs. Winship, sympathetically. ‘And they have a very good flavour,’ added Elsie. ‘Don’t touch them, dearest!’ cried Bell, snatching the plate from under Elsie’s very nose. ‘I won’t have you made ill by my failures. But as for the boys, I don’t care a fig for them. Let them make flapjacks more to their taste, the odious things! Polly Oliver, did you put in that baking powder, as I told you, while I went for the pork?’ Polly blanched. ‘Baking powder?’ she faltered.