Meantime, Cornelia in the kitchen started the fire up brightly, put on the tea-kettle, and began to concoct a soft gingerbread with the aid of the nice thick sour milk. When it was in the oven, she hunted out her mother’s old worn breadraiser, greased the squeaking handle with butter, and started some bread. She remembered how everybody in the family loved mother’s home-made bread; and, if there was one thing above another in which she had excelled as a little girl in the kitchen, it was in making bread. Somehow it did not seem as though things were on a right basis until she had some bread on the way. As she crumbled the yeast cake into a sauce dish and put it a-soak, she began to hum a little tune; yet her mind was so preoccupied with what she had to do that she scarcely remembered it was the theme of the music that ran all through the college play. College life had somehow receded for the present, and in place of costumes and drapery she was considering what she ought to make and bake in order to have the pantry and refrigerator well stocked, and how soon she might with a clear conscience go upstairs and start clearing up Carey’s bedroom. She couldn’t settle rightly to anything until that awful mess was straightened out. The consciousness of the disorder up there in the third story was like a bruise that had been given her, which made itself more and more felt as the minutes passed. When the cover was put down tight on the breadraiser, Cornelia looked about her. “I really ought to clean this kitchen first,” she said thoughtfully, speaking aloud as if she and herself were having it out about the work. “There aren’t enough dishes unpacked for the family to eat comfortably, but there’s not room on those shelves for them if they were unpacked.” So, with a glance at the rapidly rising gingerbread that let out a whiff of delicious aroma, she mounted on a chair, and began to clear off the top shelves of the dresser. It seemed as if there had been no system whatever in placing things. Bottles of shoe-blacking, a hammer, a box of gingersnaps, a can of putty, and several old neckties were settled in between glass sauce-dishes and the electric iron. She kept coming on little necessities. With small ceremony she swept them all down to an orderly row on the floor on the least-used side of the room, and with soap, hot water, and a scrubbing-brush went at the shelves. It didn’t take long, of course; but she put a great deal of energy into the work, and began to feel actually happy as she smelled the clean soap-suds, and beheld what a difference it made in the shabby, paintless shelves to get rid of the dirt. “Now, we’ve at least got a spot to put things!” she announced as she took the gingerbread-tins out of the oven, and with great satisfaction noted that she had not forgotten how to make gingerbread in the interval of her college days.