“I won’t buy the cream puffs,” she decided.  “I wonder if there is anything in the house I could make into a dessert?” Search revealed nothing but a bag of prunes, which had been on the shelf for months, and were as dry as a bone.  They did not appeal to Migwan in the least, but there was nothing else in evidence.  “I might make prune whip,” she thought rather doubtfully.  “They’re pretty hard, but I can soak them.  I’ll need the oven to make prune whip, so I will bake the potatoes too.”  She hunted around for the potatoes and finally found them in a small paper bag.  “Buying potatoes two quarts at a time must be rather expensive,” she reflected.  She put the prunes to soak and the potatoes in the oven and went down to the store.  “How much is porterhouse steak?” she asked before she had the butcher cut any off.

“Twenty-eight cents a pound,” answered the man behind the counter.  Migwan gave a little gasp.  The money she had would not even buy a pound.

“How much is round steak?” she inquired.

“Twenty-two,” came the reply.

“Give me twenty-five cents’ worth,” she said.  It did not look particularly tender and Migwan thought distressedly how her mother would complain when she found round steak instead of porterhouse.  “But there is no help for it,” she said to herself grimly, “beggars cannot be choosers.”  She stopped on the way home to get the recipe for prune whip from Sahwah.  Sahwah was not at home, but her mother gave Migwan the recipe and added many directions as to the proper mixing of the ingredients.  “Is—­is there any way of making tough round steak tender?” she asked timidly, just a little ashamed to admit that they had to eat round steak.

“There certainly is,” answered Mrs. Brewster.  “You just pound all the flour into it that it will take up.  I hardly ever buy porterhouse steaks any more since I learned that trick.  I am having some to-night.  It is one of our favorite dishes here.  Round steak prepared in this way is known in the restaurants as ‘Dutch steak,’ and commands a high price.”  Considerably cheered by this last intelligence, Migwan sped home and got her prune dessert into the oven and then set to work transforming the tough steak into a tender morsel.

“What kind of meat is this?” asked her mother when they had taken their places at the table.

“Guess,” said Migwan.

“It tastes like tenderloin,” said her mother.

“Guess again,” said Migwan gleefully; “it’s round steak.”

“The butcher must be buying better meat than usual, then,” said Mrs. Gardiner.  “I never got such round steak as this out here before.”

“And you never will, either,” said Migwan, swelling with pride, “if you leave it to the butcher,” and she told how she had treated the steak to produce the present result.

“I never heard of that before,” said her mother, amazed at this simple culinary trick.

Next the prune whip was brought on and pronounced good by every one and “bully” by Tom, who ate his in great spoonfuls.  “I see I’ll have to let you get the meals after this,” said Mrs. Gardiner to Migwan.  “You have a knack of putting things together, which I have not.”