“I have only one,” said Miriam, “and it is not very big; I intended to make some more, but I haven’t had time.  But you needn’t do anything, you know.  You can just give me advice and keep me company.”

“Oh, I want to do things.  I want to work,” cried Dora; “it would be cruel to keep me from the fun of helping you get supper.  Haven’t you something I can slip on instead of this dress?  It is not very fine, but I don’t want to spatter or burn it.”

“None of my clothes are long enough for you,” said Miriam; “but perhaps I might find something in the garret.  There are all sorts of clothes up there.  If you choose, we can go up and look.”

In the next minute the two girls were in the great garret, kneeling in front of a trunk, in which Miriam had found the silk robe, which now lay tumbled up in a corner of a stall in the cow-stable.  Article after article of female attire was drawn out and tossed on the floor.  Dora was delighted; she was fond of old-fashioned things, and here were clothes of various eras.  Some colonial, perhaps, and none that had been worn since these two girls had come into the world.  There was a calico dress with large pink figures in it which caught Dora’s eye; she sprang to her feet, shook it out, and held it up before her.

“This will do,” she said.  “The length is all right, and it does not matter about the rest of the fit.”

“Of course not,” said Miriam; “and now let us go down.  We need not wait to put the rest of the things back.”

As Dora was about to go, her eyes fell on an old-fashioned pink sunbonnet.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, “I will take that, too.  I shall be awfully awkward, and I don’t want to get cinders or flour in my hair.”

When Dora had arrayed herself in the calico dress with pink flowers, she stood for a moment before the large mirror in Miriam’s room.  The dress was very short as to waist, and very perpendicular as to skirt, and the sleeves were puffy at the elbows and tight about the wrists, but pink was a color that became her, the quaint cut of the gown was well suited to her blooming face, and altogether she was pleased with the picture in the glass.  As for the sunbonnet, that was simply hideous, but it could be taken off when she chose, and the wearing of it would help her very much in making herself known to Mr. Ralph Haverley.

For half an hour the girls worked bravely in the kitchen.  Dora had some knowledge of the principles of cookery, though her practice had been small, and Miriam possessed an undaunted courage in culinary enterprises.  However, they planned nothing difficult, and got on very well.  Dora made up some of Miriam’s dough into little rolls.

“I wish I could make these as the Tolbridges’ new cook makes them.  They say that every morning she sends in a plate of breakfast rolls, each one a different shape, and some of them ever so pretty.”

“I don’t suppose they taste any better for that,” remarked Miriam.