Rosie sighed too. “Well we’ll consider next Thursday when it comes,” she decided wisely, “and besides Granny and Mrs. Dore or Floribel will teach us how to cook anything--they said they would. And now we come to supper.” However supper was not so easy for Laura as for the other two, because Rosie immediately decided that Laura should make some of her one-two-three-four cake. The rest of the meal was to be bread and butter, some of the preserves left over from the year before, with which the house was richly provided; and great pitchers of milk. “We’ve got to do the cooking for this whole day ourselves,” Maida sighed. “There isn’t a thing in which the boys can help us.” “No,” Rosie admitted regretfully, “and I wanted to make them work too. Next week,” she added, “they’ll be busy enough because we’ll have ice cream and they’ll have to turn the freezer.” The girls pinned up their schedule of meals on the kitchen wall; set the alarm clock for an incredibly early hour; went to bed at eight, instead of nine, very serene in their minds. The record of their first day was probably as good and as bad as that of most amateur cooks. In the early morning, the little girls moved so noiselessly about the big kitchen and talked in such low tones that Mrs. Dore said she had not heard a sound until the breakfast bell rang. The first two courses of breakfast went off beautifully. Then they discovered they had boiled the eggs twelve minutes. Granny declared that they must eat them because eggs were expensive. Perhaps it was to take away the sting from this mistake that Mrs. Dore remarked that she had never seen oranges look so beautiful as these--in their curled golden calyxes. When it came to luncheon, there were mistakes again; but not such serious ones. Rosie’s chowder was hot and perfectly delicious; only there wasn’t enough of it. Rosie herself nobly went without; but the children clamored for more. On the other hand, she had made enough bread pudding for a family twice their size. Here the boys eagerly came to the rescue and demanded three helpings each. Supper was very successful. Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore congratulated Rosie warmly upon it. “Well I didn’t make any mistakes for this meal,” Rosie said dryly, “because there wasn’t anything that I cooked.” However Granny continued to praise the three tired little girls. “It’s foine little cooks you’ll make,” she prophesied. In the glow that this praise developed, they washed and wiped the dishes, chattering like magpies. And then, following the impulse which emerged from that happy glow, they cleaned up Floribel’s kitchen; re-arranged and re-decorated it. They re-arranged and re-decorated to such good purpose that, the next day, Floribel said privately to Mrs. Dore. “It sho do look beautiful. Ah’se never seen a kitchen lak it, but Ah can’t find a _single thing_.” CHAPTER XI VISITORS