MRS. LENNOX came in to call on Mrs. Welles later the same day. Her Maggie had been with her now several days, and she could judge how far she was likely to be of use to her. Molly had been anxious to know the result of the experiment, for she felt deeply interested in her neighbor, and that if Maggie should prove more a trial than comfort she might perhaps have contributed by her advice to that result. After a little conversation about Mrs. Welles’s visit and her long acquaintance with Molly, the latter asked how she got on with the new inmate. “For the first three or four days it seemed a failure, but I am hopeful now of better things; she is strong, seems willing, and I think is trying to do. At all events I almost think if she never gets beyond the point of washing dishes, taking up ashes, making fires, preparing vegetables and washing I shall be the gainer, for that drudgery left me no time for the lighter work to be properly done.” “Oh, but if she does those things willingly, and as you tell her, she will not stop there, I think; Mrs. Framley was speaking of her sister, and says she is of thoroughly good stock, and that is a great deal. The good-for-nothing girls one meets with usually come from thriftless stock.” “Well, I’m going to hope for the best, and as I’m not expecting too many of the cardinal virtues for a few dollars a month, perhaps I may not be disappointed; and now, my dear Mrs. Bishop, I am going to ask you to give me a few recipes of economical dishes for a family like ours. Until I talked with you, I only knew of pot-pie and Irish stew, both badly made, and though I have a cookery-book which you tell me is excellent, I never made anything come quite right out of it.” “In justice to the cooking-book, and indeed to latter day cooking-books in general, I think, perhaps, if you’ll forgive me, that may have been because you did not know enough of the elements of cooking.” “I certainly did not, and although I know little now, I feel so very much wiser than I did a month ago that I look back in wonder. There’s another reason why I could not use my cookery-book,—it always wanted something I had not in the house by way of flavoring; then I shut up the book and cooked in my own old way.” “One of your American worthies, ‘Josiah Allen’s wife,’ I think, says: ‘It’s the flavorin’ as does it,’” said Mrs. Welles; “and I think fifty cents expended in flavorings a very good investment, from an economical point of view.” “Yes, if one lives in New York one can buy all sorts of sweet herbs, and dry them. At the same time I don’t think Mr. Lennox likes them.”