What time was it, and what ought she to do first? She stepped to the dining-room door to consult the clock which she could hear ticking noisily from the mantel, and her eye caught her sister’s note written large across the corner of a paper bag. “_Dear Nellie_, I had to go to school. I’ll get back as soon after four as I can. You can heet the fride potatoes, and there are some eggs. LOUIE.” Suddenly the tears blurred into her eyes at thought of the little disappointed sister yet taking care for her in her absence. Dear little Louie! How hard it must have been for her! And she remembered the sigh she had heard from the kitchen a little while ago. Well, she was thankful she had been awakened right away and not allowed to go on in her selfish indifference. She glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to nine. She had lost a lot of time mooning over her own troubles. She had but seven hours in which to work wonders before any one returned. She must go to work at once. CHAPTER IV A hasty survey of the larder showed a scant supply of materials. There were flour and sugar and half a basket of potatoes. Some cans of tomatoes and corn, a paper bag of dried beans, another of rice, two eggs in a basin, and a dish of discouraged-looking fried potatoes with burnt edges completed the count. A small bit of butter on a plate and the end of a baker’s loaf of bread had evidently been left on the dining-room table for her. There were a good many things needed from the store, and she began to write them down on the other side of her sister’s note. A further investigation revealed half a bottle of milk that had soured. Cornelia’s face brightened. That would make a wonderful gingerbread, and she wrote down “Molasses, soda, brown sugar, baking-powder,” on her list. It wasn’t as if Cornelia hadn’t spent the first sixteen years of her life at home with her mother, for she knew how to cook and manage quite well before she went away to school; only of course she hadn’t done a thing at it since she left home, and like most girls she thought she hated the very idea of kitchen work. “Now, where do they buy things?” she wondered aloud to the clock as if it were alive. “I shall have to find out. I suppose if I take a basket and go far enough, I shall come to a store. If I don’t I can ask somebody.”