“Usually,” continued Dorothy, in an official manner which she flattered herself was in close imitation of the president of the Glenloch Fortnightly Club, “Usually we shall choose our dishes beforehand and bring the materials for making them.  As this is the first meeting, Mrs. Ellsworth is going to let us use her materials, and she thinks that we’d better get up a simple supper for our first attempt.  I thought that popovers, scalloped oysters, baked apples, cake, chocolate and some simple dessert would be nice, and after this you can make things as elaborate as you like.”

Dorothy looked so dignified and important as she finished her little speech that irrepressible Charlotte longed to tickle her or rumple her hair, two things that the neat Dorothy loathed.  As she couldn’t she only said meekly, “Please, ma’am, are we to choose which we’d rather cook?  If we are, I prefer the apples.”

“So do I,” laughed Katharine; “you’re not any lazier than I am, Charlotte.”

“We’ll have to write the names of things on slips of paper and draw for them,” said Dorothy, “and no matter what you get you must do the best you can with it.”

“My, but you are stern, Dolly,” said Betty admiringly.  “I should probably have let them spend the next half hour wrangling about what they’ll do.”

Charlotte, who had been made secretary, wrote the names of the various dishes on slips of paper and put them in the hat which Betty brought her.  Then with a low bow she presented the hat to Dorothy, who drew the slip on which was written “scalloped oysters.”

“How noble of you, Dolly, to draw the one we should all have hated,” cried Ruth.  “Oh, I’m not sure but this is just as bad,” she added, as the slip marked “dessert” fell to her lot.  Betty found herself staring at the word “popovers,” while Katharine and Alice drew cake and chocolate respectively.

“Girls, I don’t need to tell you that ’the lame and the lazy are always provided for,’” cried Charlotte, as she triumphantly flourished the “baked apple” slip.  “I will prepare my portion of the feast and then read a while.”

“Oh, I forgot to say,” said Betty, “that mother suggested that the one who baked the apples might even up things by building the fire.  She said one of the first duties of a cook was to know how to manage the stove.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Betty,” groaned Charlotte, as she made up a face.  “I don’t know anything about building a fire.  How under the sun shall I begin?”

“Read this and grow wise,” answered Betty, thrusting an open cookbook under Charlotte’s nose.  “That tells you just how to do it.”

Each of the other girls having brought a cookbook buried herself in it for the time being, while Charlotte, left to her own resources, proceeded to build the fire.  First she read with great care the directions in the cookbook, and then looked rather helplessly at the stove.