“Make one pint of Indian meal into mush the usual way, which is by stirring the meal into boiling water and letting it boil until it is thick.  While hot put in a small lump of butter and a dessertspoonful of salt.  Set the mush aside to cool.  Beat separately the whites and yolks of four eggs until very light; add the eggs to the mush, and cream in by degrees one quart of wheat flour; add half a pint of buttermilk or sour cream, in which you have dissolved a half-teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda; add sweet milk enough to make a thin batter.

“Have the waffle-irons hot.  They should be heated in advance, not to keep the batter waiting.  Butter them thoroughly and half fill them with the batter.  Bake over a quick fire.”

I never eat waffles without thinking of a pleasant home where two girls and a boy who read this paper have good times every summer.  They often go out on the bay for an afternoon sail, and come home in the rosy sunset in time for waffles.  Waffles, with sugar and cream, are a very nice addition to a supper table.

Another receipt of Miss Muffet’s: 

Delicious Corn Muffins.—­One pint of corn meal sifted, one egg, one pint of sweet milk, a teaspoonful of butter, and half a teaspoonful of salt.  Pour this mixture into muffin-rings and bake in a very quick oven.

This receipt is one that mother sometimes uses on a cold winter evening when she has nothing else hot for supper.  They are great favorites in our household.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW TO SWEEP.

In the first chapter of this story I spoke of the trouble housekeepers in Bloomdale had to get and keep good servants.

We Clover Leaf girls made up our minds that we would learn to be independent.  We resolved to know how to do every sort of housework, so that we might assist our mothers whenever they needed us, and be ready for any emergency as it came along.

Aunt Hetty’s daughter-in-law in Boston sent the poor old soul a letter which made her rather uneasy, and grandmamma thought that I might better let her go and pay Sally a visit while mother was away than to wait till her return.

“The fall dressmaking and cleaning will be coming on then,” said grandmother, “and thee will be busy with school again.  So if Hetty takes her vacation now, she will be here to help the dear mother then.”

I agreed to this, for the chance of having the kitchen to myself was very tempting.  The club was charmed; they said they would just live at our house and help me with all their might.

“Then you won’t have Hetty’s moods to worry you,” said Veva, consolingly.

We had a good time.  Nevertheless it was a happy day for me when Aunt Hetty, bag and baggage, came home a week sooner than she was expected.  Nobody was looking for her; but the good old soul, having seen her relations, felt restless, and wanted to get home.