The recipe was, of course, written in German. Molly had not been able to do it without help from the dictionary, but she remembered that she was improving her German, which, indeed, was one of her reasons for taking a German girl, the compulsory practice would be so good for herself. “Half a cup of fine bread crumbs, just enough milk to swell them, two eggs, three table-spoonfuls of sugar, two of butter, the juice of one lemon, the grated rinds of two. Beat sugar and butter to a cream, then the eggs and lemon juice, and last the bread and milk. You can make the mixture while I roll the paste and get the pie ready, but first I’m going to knock a few holes in this tin pie-plate, so that the crust may be light at the bottom.” She took a small nail and hammer, and with it perforated the pie-plate till it looked like a colander. The paste was firm and hard, and Molly rolled it out with perfect ease, the third of an inch thick, without its once sticking to the board, which was lightly floured. She laid the pie-plate on it, and cut a circle a little larger than the tin to allow for the depth. Every touch she made was quick and light, just as if the paste were tulle or white satin. She turned the plate over, laid the paste on it, and pressed it _only on the bottom_, never touching the edges. She cut a little piece and put it in the oven to try it. Then she cut two long strips of paste, about an inch wide, and laid them lightly around the pie, so as to make the edge twice the thickness of the bottom; she gently pressed the _lower_ edge of this strip to make it adhere to the pie, and then poured in the lemon mixture. “Mr. Bishop doesn’t like meringue, or I would have kept out the two whites of eggs, to make it,” said Molly, as she took out the little “trier” she had in the oven. It had risen a full inch, and “the separate flakes could be counted!” Marta exclaimed, as she saw it. Her intelligence only seemed to rouse when she saw something out of the ordinary routine of cooking, because, as Molly afterwards found, her ideal of cooking was what the man cook at the restaurant in Germany could do; she never expected to see a lady do them, and he had made puff paste just like this, and it seemed magic to her. “And if she had never lived at the restaurant she would not have had intelligence enough to know what to admire. It is the old story,—to those who know nothing of art, a gay chromo is better than a fine painting,” said Molly, when she told Harry, who broke into good-natured laughter. “Oh, my dear Molly, you are too delicious in your enthusiasm! What would our artists say to such a comparison?” Molly joined in the laugh. “It sounds absurd, but the principle is the same. The poor girls who have no experience of good cooking or refined living can’t be expected to appreciate it.” But this was in the evening, and we are digressing from the dinner.