When there was not likely to be much left from dinner, Molly fell back on kidneys or ham and eggs for breakfast; once a week there was always fish in some form. This morning there was a little mutton on the bone, just enough for mince or fritters; there was, also, quite a piece of fish. She had bought it with that calculation, so the mutton was left for another day. Harry did not like codfish balls of salt cod, but delighted in them from fresh, and, as once boiled, it would keep a week, she had intended to have them twice. Her visitors, however, had changed that programme, but she had more than enough for breakfast. As she herself was in the kitchen, too, she decided to make hominy muffins, there being a cup of cold hominy. As the frying fat would take half an hour to get hot enough, Marta had been told to put it on the range (covered to keep in the fumes) soon after the fire should be lighted. Molly drew it forward that it might be ready by the time she herself was so. She set Marta to mash the hominy fine with a fork, then to add to one cup of it a cup of corn meal, half a cup of milk, and two tea-spoonfuls of melted butter, two tea-spoonfuls of sugar, one egg, and one tea-spoonful of baking-powder, and when beaten long and hard, to put it into gempans and bake fifteen minutes. While Marta was doing this, she herself flaked the cold fish quite fine and called Marta’s attention to the fact that she used the remaining sauce to moisten it. “If I had not this sauce, I should make just enough stiff white sauce to moisten the whole; but this is even better, and as there is egg in it I need use only one more.” To a cup of flaked fish and sauce, of which there were two good table-spoonfuls, she put one beaten egg; this made it into a stiff batter or mush that would not _run_, but _drop_ from a spoon. She seasoned it with pepper, a very little salt, and then dipping a table-spoon in flour, dropped large spoonfuls of it in the fat, which was hot enough for croquettes. In two minutes they were round and light as puffs, and beautifully brown. Knowing Marta might have to make them some time without having any sauce, Molly wrote the recipe and gave it to her. One cup of flaked fish, one table-spoonful of butter, one small one of flour, and one _gill_ of milk; melt butter and flour together, let them cook a few seconds, pour to them a gill of boiling milk, stir well over the fire till the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan; then it is done. Mix the fish with it, add two well-beaten eggs, and fry in spoonfuls in boiling lard. Harry called these glorified fish balls. “In fact, Molly, they deserve some much more high-toned name.” “Yes, but people who like the usual codfish balls, and they are the large majority, would not like these.”