“There’s a train at six from Boston and another at seven,” they finally decided. “And that’s all.” “She must have lost the three from Boston,” Maida declared. “But the six from Boston isn’t due here until eight. And in the meantime we’ll have to get supper.” “Say let us boys help,” Arthur suggested. “It must be a big job cooking for twelve. I know how to cook,” he added unexpectedly. “Where did you learn, Arthur?” Maida asked with interest. “Tramping with my father,” Arthur answered briefly. “We often camped in the woods for days.” “Supper isn’t so hard as dinner,” Rosie said hopefully. “Now I propose that we have a combination salad with hard-boiled eggs cut up in it. You see there’s a lot of cold vegetables in the ice chest and we can make a custard and orange pudding.” The whole group, three girls and three boys, bustled into the kitchen. From a drawer full of aprons, Rosie took out enough for all of them. The little girls wore the aprons as they should be worn, but in the boys’ case, Rosie tied them around their necks. “I’ve seen boys cook before,” she announced scornfully, “and when they get through, they generally look as though they had fallen into a barrel of something.” The boys protested loudly. But to some extent Rosie’s pungent comment seemed to be justified. Arthur for instance squeezed the orange juice into his own eye. He yelled so loudly at this unexpected deluge that Harold dropped an egg on his coat. “There I told you!” Rosie declared scathingly. “What did you pick out an egg to drop for, Harold, why didn’t you drop a potato?” However pride goeth before destruction and the contemptuous Rosie was soon caught up with; for clandestinely stealing a long sliver of ice from the high ice box, she seized it in such a way that it slipped out of her hand and dropped down her neck. “Serves you right,” Arthur declared with delight. With heartless interest they all watched her wriggles before she was able to secure and extricate the slippery, rapidly melting sliver. “You look as though you had had the hose squirted on you,” said Dicky. But their supper was good. The salad--lettuce with cold peas, string beans, tomatoes and sliced eggs--was so pretty that Maida said she thought it ought to be used as an ornament for the center of the table. As for the custard and orange pudding--to which the gifted Laura had added a delicious meringue--they ate and ate. “I never tasted anything so good in all my life,” Rosie sighed. “I wish we’d made a bathtubful. Once I had a dream,” she went on pensively, “where it looked as though I was going to have all the sweet things to eat I wanted. I dreamed that when I came out in the morning to go to school, the whole neighborhood was made of pink and white candy--everything, houses, streets, lamp-posts. I took a big bite right out of my fence.” “And what happened then?” Maida asked breathlessly.