To-day, however, she only separated the breast and cut off three rib chops, and trimmed them ready for breakfast, then put them away with the meat, leaving the shoulder out for dinner. It weighed about three and a half pounds, and would take, being lamb, which must be so well done, an hour and a quarter to cook. She set Marta to peel half a dozen potatoes of medium size, while she set the shoulder on a wire stand in a dripping-pan, then shook a _little_ flour over it and rubbed a little salt on the skin. Molly had profited too well by her cooking-school lessons to think of putting salt on the flesh of meat before cooking, when it would draw out the gravy. When the potatoes were peeled and washed, she put them in the dripping-pan under the meat, and for fear enough fat should not drop from the joint to prevent the potatoes from becoming hard and dry before they browned, she laid the scraps of fat she had cut from the breakfast chops upon them. It was both young and fat lamb,—had it not been, Molly would not have risked the strong taste of lamb that is nearly mutton, on potatoes, nor the hard, whitish dryness of those cooked under lean meat. The potatoes were well sprinkled with salt and the pan set in the oven. Molly had only intended having the lamb, and cut-up peaches and cream for dessert, yet, seeing she had time, for it was just a quarter to five now, and only the cloth for Marta to lay, and the cabbage to cook, she thought she would give Harry some of his beloved macaroni as a course. She therefore broke a few pipes of macaroni into pieces about six inches long, taking a dozen of them, and set them on to boil in water and a little salt till tender. While this was in process, she had sent Marta for some tomatoes from the vine, and when they came, showed her how to scald them, and herself squeezed the pulp from two large ones through a strainer, and set it in a small thick saucepan with a table-spoonful of butter, a salt-spoonful of salt, and a little pepper, and put it on the stove where it would slowly cook. Marta had scalded half a dozen tomatoes and dropped them, as she skinned them, on some cracked ice. Molly took them when they were cold and firm, and with a sharp knife cut them into slices and set them in the ice-box. “Now, Marta, come with me to set the dinner-table. I will show you, to-night, and expect you to remember afterwards. You first remove the cover and fold it, but leave on this white baize.” Molly watched to see if the girl had remembered her instructions at lunch, but found she had not retained one idea.