MOLLY had intended showing Marta how to fry potatoes, so as to have them crisp. If she gave directions merely, the girl would naturally think, being so much smaller than other things, they would be cooked as soon, and the result would be brown and flabby. She had waited to do this until some other dish needed her in the kitchen till the last minute before dinner, and to-day, as the sauce for the pudding had to be made, she could direct the one while she made the other, and she was anxious, too, to see to the taking up of the beef and making the gravy. She went to the kitchen in good time to attend to this. Half an hour before the meat was to come out, the oven was allowed to get very hot. When the paste was removed from the crock, the savory steam filled the air. The beef was lifted from the crock, put in the dripping-pan and set on the top shelf of the oven, now quite sharp, for half an hour, to brown, while Marta prepared the cabbage. The potatoes, peeled and cut into thin slices, had been lying in ice-water since morning. They were now drained and dried _thoroughly_, and the kettle of lard was put on the range to heat. Then Molly skimmed the fat from the gravy in the crock and poured it through a strainer into a small saucepan, and she then set Marta to rub as much of the vegetables through as possible. “Marta, you need not chop the cabbage to-night; for a change you will press all the water you possibly can from it, cut it across pie-fashion when it is in the dish, and make a gill of nice white sauce, using, remember, _half_ a table-spoonful of butter, _half_ one of flour and a gill of milk.” Molly was draining the cold water from the cabbage as she spoke, and put it into the boiling water; then, as it was too soon to make the sauce, she went to arrange the dining-table—which was something she found quite impossible to teach Marta. When she returned Marta had rubbed the greater part of the vegetables through. Molly put a cup of boiling water into the crock, stirred it well round the sides, then poured it through the remains of the vegetables in the strainer into the saucepan, and then set it on the range to boil fast; it was still thick with fat. “Marta, when that boils throw in a little _cold_ water, then skim it; do that three or four times till it is quite clear of fat, then set it where it will boil rapidly, to get rid of the water you have thrown in. When the grease is entirely off it, you can stir in a dessert-spoonful of brown thickening.” Molly needed for the polka sauce one table-spoonful of butter, well washed to remove salt, two large table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar, and a glass of wine, and the directions were as follows: “Beat sugar and butter till very light and white, make the sherry quite hot, add it gradually to the butter and sugar, beating all the time, stand it in a saucepan of boiling water, and do not cease beating till all are at the boiling-point.”