“Now, Marta, I leave you to bring the dinner in as soon as Mr. Bishop is ready. I have left the iced coffee packed ready; all you have to do is to wipe every spot of ice and salt from the outside, and then fill two cups from it. Pile each cup very high with the whipped cream, and bring in the cake at the same time.” CHAPTER XXVIII. FRICASSEED CHICKEN—LEMON HONEY—FRENCH ICING TO KEEP. THE next day Molly, while showing Marta how to cook the dinner, added two other articles to those she liked to have always ready. Cake, as she said, was so little eaten by Harry and herself that a loaf lasted a week, even with Marta’s help, for she, like most of her countrywomen, lived largely on soups, and salad, and vegetables, and cared little for sweets. She did not care to have the same cake, over and over again, and had she had preserves in the house, would have found it easy to convert it into something more attractive. Had she been keeping house long enough, jams and jellies would have been in her store-room; peaches were now the only available fruit, and by the time Molly was settled enough to think of doing them up, they were both poor and dear, and in the boarding-house they had been rather surfeited with canned peaches, therefore she had let them go. She had lately been unearthing several old recipes of her mother’s and grandmother’s, and some of them she meant to try. There was one called “lemon honey.” It was of more modern date than the others, and as her mother had written under it “nice change from preserves for cake,” she decided to make it. She required for it half a pound of sugar, the rind and juice of a large fresh lemon, the yolks of three eggs and white of one, and three ounces of sweet butter. She followed directions, which were to put the butter and sugar together in a saucepan. (As the butter was rather salt she took the precaution of washing it first.) While these melted, she beat the eggs thoroughly, grated off the lemon peel into them, taking care to remove all the yellow, which contains the flavor of lemon, yet not to grate deeply enough to remove any of the white, pithy rind, and then mixed all together over the fire until as thick as honey, taking care it did not scorch. When done it was thick, smooth, yellow, and semi-opaque. She poured it into two small jelly-glasses, and put it away. While she was doing this, Marta had been picking over a scant half pint of black beans for soup, which when washed she put over the fire in a quart of cold water, in which she also put one small onion, two cloves, a tiny pinch of marjoram, one slightly larger of thyme, and two sprigs of parsley. These were to simmer slowly, until the beans could be rubbed through a strainer, and then a pint of strong beef stock, which had been making all morning, was to be added, and all boiled together for an hour.