CHAPTER VI.

A CANDY PULL.

Of all things in the world, what should grandmamma propose but my sending for Miss Muffet!  Great-aunt Jessamine had gone away long before.

“I believe it was to-day that the girls meant to have the candy pull at Jeanie’s, wasn’t it?” grandmamma asked.

“Yes, darling grandmamma,” I said, “they may have it; but I am not going to desert you.”

“Thee is very kind, dearie,” replied grandmamma; “but I need only quiet, and Hetty will come out of her attack just as well without thee as with thee.  I particularly wish that thee would go.  How is thee to have the fair unless thee has the candy pull?  The time is passing, too.  It will soon be school and lessons again.”

So, at grandmamma’s urging, I went for Miss Muffet.  The little woman came without much delay, and took hold, as she expressed it, looking after both our invalids; and in the meantime telling me how to broil a steak for my grandmamma’s and our own dinner, and how to fry potatoes so that they should not be soaked with grease.

A girl I know gained a set of Dickens’ works by broiling a steak so as to please her father, who was a fastidious gentleman, and said he wanted it neither overdone nor underdone, but just right.

For broiling you need a thick steak, a clear fire, and a clean gridiron.  Never try to broil meat over a blaze.  You must have a bed of coals, with a steady heat.  The steak must not be salted until you have turned each side to the fire; and it must be turned a good many times and cooked evenly.  It will take from five to seven minutes to broil it properly, and it will then have all the juices in, and be fit for a king.

I don’t know that kings have any better food than other gentlemen, but one always supposes that they will have the very best.

A steak may be cooked very appetizingly in the frying pan; but the pan must be very hot, and have no grease in it.  Enough of that will ooze from the fat of the steak to keep it from sticking fast.  A good steak cooked in a cold frying-pan and simmering in grease is an abomination.  So declares Miss Muffet, and all epicures with her.

To fry potatoes or croquettes or any other thing well, one must have plenty of lard or butter or beef drippings, as she prefers, and let it boil.  It should bubble up in the saucepan, and there should be enough of it to cover the wire basket in which the delicately sliced potatoes are laid—­a few at time—­to cook.  They will not absorb fat, because the heat, when the first touch of it is given, will form a tight skin over them, and the grease cannot pierce this.  They will be daintily brown, firm and dry.

But this isn’t telling of our candy pull.

We had set our hearts on having fun and doing good—­killing two birds with one stone, as Al Fay said.  But I do not approve of that proverb, for certainly no girl ever wishes to kill a bird; no more does a decent boy think of such a thing.