"Just letting it boil a tiny little bit," said her mother, "around the edges of the saucepan, but not all over. And here is the receipt for:" SCRAMBLED EGGS 1 egg for each person. 2 tablespoonfuls of milk to each egg. 2 shakes of salt. 1 shake of pepper. Break the eggs in a bowl, beat them twelve times, then add the milk, salt, and pepper; heat a pan, put in a piece of butter the size of a hickory-nut, and when it is melted, pour in the eggs; stir them as they cook, and scrape them off the bottom of the pan; when they are all thick and creamy, they are done. "I have taken the rule for the stew three times over for twelve people, and I don't think it will be a bit too much; but as almost everyone will want the cheese dreams, suppose we scramble only five eggs. "You'd better do that right away, for supper is almost ready. Brownie's potatoes are just done, and she can be filling the glasses with water, and putting on the butter and bread, and these two big dishes of honey to eat with the biscuits for the last course." While Mildred was cooking the eggs, Mother Blair put the oysters on the table, with the hot soup-plates and a generous supply of crisp oyster-crackers; the cheese dreams were done and in the oven, and Mildred covered the eggs and set the dish in the warming oven, and put the cocoa on the table in a chocolate pot. Then everybody sat down and began to eat. After the oyster stew was all gone, they had the hot cheese dreams and scrambled eggs and the stuffed potatoes and cocoa all at once; and when those too had vanished, there were the little biscuits and the beautiful golden clover-honey in the comb, and perhaps that was the very best of all. "Never, never, did I eat anything so good as this supper!" Father Blair said solemnly, as he ate his fourth biscuit. "That oyster stew--those potatoes--the cheese dreams--" "What a greedy father!" said Mildred. "And you never said a word about the cocoa--" "Nor about the scrambled eggs--" said Brownie, eagerly. "But I ate them all," said her father. "I ate everything I was given, and I should like to eat them all again! Next time we come, have twice as much of everything, won't you?" But everybody else said that they couldn't have eaten one single crumb more. And they knew perfectly well that Father Blair couldn't, either. Then everybody helped wash the dishes and put things away, and Farmer Dunn came over to put out the fires and shut the doors; and presently it was all dark in the House in the Woods, and so still that, far, far off, you could hear the sound of the singing of the boys and girls as they rode home across the snow. CHAPTER III JACK'S SCHOOL-LUNCHEONS "Mother," said Jack, one evening, "I'd like to take my lunch to school for the next few weeks; all the fellows are going to, so we can have more time for class elections and so on. Do you suppose Norah could put up one for me every morning?"