“Why,” said Aunt Abigail, as if remembering that Betsy had asked her a question. “Any man could strike a spark from his flint and steel that he had for his gun. And he’d keep striking it till it happened to fly out in the right direction, and you’d catch it in some fluff where it would start a smoulder, and you’d blow on it till you got a little flame, and drop tiny bits of shaved-up dry pine in it, and so, little by little, you’d build your fire up.” “But it must have taken forEVER to do that!” “Oh, you didn’t have to do that more than once in ever so long,” said Aunt Abigail, briskly. She interrupted her story to say: “Now you put the silver around, while I cream the potatoes. It’s in that drawer—a knife, a fork, and two spoons for each place—and the plates and cups are up there behind the glass doors. We’re going to have hot cocoa again tonight.” And as the little girl, hypnotized by the other’s casual, offhand way of issuing instructions, began to fumble with the knives and forks she went on: “Why, you’d start your fire that way, and then you’d never let it go out. Everybody that amounted to anything knew how to bank the hearth fire with ashes at night so it would be sure to last. And the first thing in the morning, you got down on your knees and poked the ashes away very carefully till you got to the hot coals. Then you’d blow with the bellows and drop in pieces of dry pine—don’t forget the water-glasses—and you’d blow gently till they flared up and the shavings caught, and there your fire would be kindled again. The napkins are in the second drawer.” Betsy went on setting the table, deep in thought, reconstructing the old life. As she put the napkins around she said, “But SOMETIMES it must have gone out ...” “Yes,” said Aunt Abigail, “sometimes it went out, and then one of the children was sent over to the nearest neighbor to borrow some fire. He’d take a covered iron pan fastened on to a long hickory stick, and go through the woods—everything was woods then—to the next house and wait till they had their fire going and could spare him a pan full of coals; and then—don’t forget the salt and pepper—he would leg it home as fast as he could streak it, to get there before the coals went out. Say, Betsy, I think that apple sauce is ready to be sweetened. You do it, will you? I’ve got my hands in the biscuit dough. The sugar’s in the left-hand drawer in the kitchen cabinet.” “Oh, MY!” cried Betsy, dismayed. “_I_ don’t know how to cook!” Aunt Abigail laughed and put back a strand of curly white hair with the back of her floury hand. “You know how to stir sugar into your cup of cocoa, don’t you?” “But how MUCH shall I put in?” asked Elizabeth Ann, clamoring for exact instruction so she wouldn’t need to do any thinking for herself. “Oh, till it tastes right,” said Aunt Abigail, carelessly. “Fix it to suit yourself, and I guess the rest of us will like it. Take that big spoon to stir it with.”