CHAPTER XII
In the Country
"A letter from Aunt Maria," said Mr. Thorne, who had met the postman at the door at breakfast time. "Dear old lady! I wonder whether she can be coming to make us a good long visit."
His wife looked up from the coffee cups with dismay. "Don't suggest such a thing," she remonstrated. "Remember that last three months visit. Of course she will not come again for years."
Dolly looked inquiringly at her sister. "Aunt Maria? I think I recall something about a visit from such a relative."
"Of course you do," said her brother. "She came and found Mary was keeping house all wrong, and kindly tried to show her how it should be done. She insisted on boiled dinners and pie for me at night, and doughnuts every morning for breakfast. When at last she showed signs of getting ready to go home, I entreated her to stay longer, and it is my fondest dream to have her back; indeed, I want her to make her home with us permanently."
"Do hurry up and read the letter, Dick. If she says she is coming here, I warn you in advance that Dolly can keep house. I shall go off and make some visits."
After a brief glance at the page Mr. Thorne waved the letter about his head. "Glory, glory!" he chanted. "Listen to this and think shame to your inhospitable selves.
"'My dear Nephew: – I have decided to go West and spend the summer with your great-aunt Eliza. I write to say that, as I do not care to close the cottage, I shall be pleased to have you and Mary spend two or three months in it. I recall that though your ways of keeping house in the city seemed strange to me, still Mary did have things tidy, so I am quite willing to have her here in my absence. I shall go next week, and you can come any time after that. My regards to your wife.
"'Your affectionate aunt,"'Maria Hancock.'"
Mary beamed as she listened. "Dear old thing," she said when her husband laid down the letter; "there's a reward for all my sufferings while she was here. Dolly, she has a darling little house only an hour's ride from town; and a garden, my dear, a garden! We can have a lovely cool time all summer, and eat our own vegetables. Think of it."
"Yes, Dolly, I seem to smell the delicious, soul-satisfying odor of those onions now," said Dick, luxuriously closing his eyes. "Young ones, Dolly, strong and spicy. We shall have them for breakfast in the morning and for dinner at night, and I shall have a light lunch of them with bread and butter at bedtime; there's nothing like onions for insomnia. Sundays, of course, I shall have them four times. Dear, dear Aunt Maria!"
"Hush, Dick; don't spoil all our pleasure with such horrid suggestions. Is it really a nice place, Mary?"
"Nice! It's heavenly. Not much society, you know, just a plain little country village, but cool and lovely. We will wear our oldest gowns, and do up fruit, and have our breakfasts on the porch, and just revel."
"Cherry pie," murmured Mr. Thorne, who was apparently eating his breakfast in a sort of waking dream. "And apple pie; rhubarb pie, too, and currant pie; strawberry pie and gooseberry pie also. Dear Aunt Maria!"
"You can cut the grass nights after you get home, Dick," said his wife; "and you can get up early and pull the weeds in the garden and water things. And on half-holidays you can saw wood; I remember Aunt Maria said she had a wood-stove. It will give you just the exercise you need, and be a pleasant change for you from office work."
"Mary," said Dick, rising suddenly from the table, "don't detain me with such frivolous ideas when I am in such a hurry as I am in this morning. However, I must pause long enough to say that I am to have extra hours this summer, and no half-holidays, so that it will not do for you to depend upon me to pull weeds or cut grass. You had better plan to do those little things yourselves."
"He may joke all he likes," smiled his wife as the dining-room door closed after her husband, "but he is as delighted as we are over the prospect. We will go the very minute Aunt Maria leaves the house. It seems as though I couldn't wait till then."
In ten days the little apartment was ready to be closed for the summer and the trunks stood in the hallway. Mrs. Thorne was taking a parting glance all around.
"I have just one regret in leaving," she said to Dolly. "That is, that we have had no time to try and sub-let this place. I have known ever so many people who went away in summer and rented their apartments to people who wanted to come to the city and study in the college or take a course in art, or something of the sort. Often you can find half a dozen nice girls who want to do their own housekeeping in a furnished flat, and then, you see, I would have let them have this for exactly the same rent as we pay and so have saved a lot. Of course, as we do not pay rent in the country, there is no additional expense, but still I cannot help mourning over the 'might have been.' Remember, Dolly, to try and get a good tenant when you move out temporarily."
By afternoon of the next day the family was settled in the little cottage. It was a plain, old house with a low roof, and the furnishings were largely of hair-cloth, and the pictures enlarged crayon portraits of deceased relatives, or wreaths of wax flowers encased in glass. Still, the porch was shaded with vines, and the flowers grew luxuriantly in the little yard in front, and back of the house was what Mary declared was "a perfect dream" of a vegetable garden, with rows of currant and raspberry bushes along the fence and a group of fruit trees in a tiny orchard further off. Altogether, it was just what filled their needs.
"The kitchen, however, does not suit me a bit," declared Dolly after the rest of the house had been examined and pronounced quite comfortable, and roomy enough for a servantless ménage.
"Well, it isn't up to our modern notions, to be sure," said her sister, looking critically around. "Everything is as clean as wax, as I had expected, but an unpainted sink needs lots of scrubbing, and a wood-stove needs blacking, and also constant stoking. Dear me, how horrid it is to have to burn wood after gas! But never mind; I ought to be ashamed to say such a thing in view of our mercies. Keep your mind on the garden, Dolly, and such things as scrubbing will be forgotten."
"And no bread-mixer," Dolly went on, investigating the pantry shelves, "and no egg-beater and no cream-whipper! My dear, we must pack up our trunks and go straight back to town. We will be worn to a frazzle in a week working in Aunt Maria's ways."
"Don't worry," said Mrs. Thorne placidly. "Those things are all in the big barrel I packed while you were off shopping day before yesterday. I forgot to tell you. I knew we would have to eke out in such things. As to the bread-mixer, one of my unpardonable sins, in Aunt Maria's eyes, was that I made bread in one, so I knew in advance that I must bring mine along."
"And did you buy a kerosene-stove, too?"
"Yes, I did! I was going to surprise you with it, however, and I wish you hadn't asked. I just boldly took the price out of Incidentals, knowing that we should save mints of money on vegetables this summer and I could put the amount back on our return to town in September."
"And all those groans over the stove-stoking we were going to do were words, idle words!"
Mrs. Thorne laughed gaily. "Just low comedy," she said. "And now for our meals. What shall we have for dinner to-night? We shall have to go down-town and buy some butter and eggs and coffee and such things, and bring them back, too; we must not expect city service here."
They decided that this first night it would be foolish to try and have a regular dinner, so when Mr. Thorne came home he found a supper table set out on the porch, and a little meal arranged of parsley omelet, creamed potatoes, and coffee, followed by strawberries and cream. It was the very poetry of living to sit leisurely in the growing dusk under the vines and listen to the soft country noises. The family then and there decided to take their meals out-of-doors all summer.
"The neighbors will think we are crazy," said Mr. Thorne placidly. "They will write to Aunt Maria and tell her we are disgracing her hearthstone. No well conducted villagers would think of doing such a thing as eating on a porch when there was a dining-room with a black walnut table and six chairs in their proper places. They will not consider us respectable, my dears!"
"I can't help it if they don't like it, and I don't believe it would surprise Aunt Maria in the least if she heard of it; I think she would say she had no doubt I was quite capable of doing something even as outlandish as this. But in spite of everything, we certainly shall have our meals out-of-doors except on blazing hot noons, and on rainy nights. So there!"
Mr. Thorne was entirely right in the estimation put on the family by the neighbors, but nevertheless they ate, and rejoiced that they could eat under the vines on the porch all summer long.
The second day they took account of what their garden could be depended on to give them. They found string-beans in plenty, radishes, potatoes, spinach and beets. Lettuce was almost ready; peas and corn progressing nicely, and later on there would be cucumbers and tomatoes and eggplant. Last of all, squashes and melons might be looked for. They could scarcely believe all this wealth was to be theirs for the picking.
"But the weeding, don't forget that!" said Dolly, as she heard her sister's exclamation. "I somehow don't seem to fancy the idea of weeding this place. At least, I don't yearn to begin."
"I think we had better have a regular weeding boy; we can pay him in vegetables."
"He will not take them; everybody has vegetables here."
"Then we will pay him in dollars and cents, – mostly cents. Of course we can't do the weeding ourselves, except casually and at odd minutes, and I foresee that Dick will never do a bit. I shall take the money out of what we would spend on food at home, our dollar a day. Weeding is a legitimate expense, but you know how I hate to break into Incidentals, and we can easily save here."
"There's the washing and ironing, remember. You have got to pay for those, you know. I wonder whether they will be a great deal here."
"Those will be less than in town; we can have the wash-lady scrub up the floors too."
"And there is milk."
"That will be less, too. In town we have to pay eight cents a bottle, and in some places it is more than that; here, I fancy, it will be about six cents a quart."
"And there is ice; or do they use ice in the country?"
"Yes, they cut it on the river near here; but it is not always good or abundant. I rather think we cannot use it recklessly; I have known the supply to give out in the middle of the summer when there was a short crop cut."
"And is it cheap?"
"About as much as in town, I think; that is the way usually."
"What do you think about meat? Did you see the butcher shop when we came up from the station?"
"Yes, and I did not like its looks a bit better than I see you did. But perhaps we need not buy our meat there, if we do not like it better when we go inside and look around. There may be a meat-wagon that comes around."
"I think meat-wagons are horrid; they are never clean."
"Not to our city eyes, you mean. Well, we shall see. Perhaps there is a model cart with everything spick and span, and driver in a white jacket; who knows?"
One morning, when they had quite settled down to housekeeping, Mary got out the best preserving-kettle, after the breakfast dishes were done, and presently the weeding boy appeared with a big basket of strawberries which had been ordered the day before, as the garden bed must not be entirely picked off.
"Now for some delicious strawberry preserves," the cook observed as she began vigorously to stem them. "Get out my book, Dolly, and copy down for yourself that recipe marked 'Strawberries; unfailing.' I got it from a Danish woman once, and it is the best I ever saw. The fruit looks like rich German berries, the kind that come done up in glass and cost a dollar a bottle, and they never lose color or spoil; they keep for years."
So Dolly read and wrote out:
"'Get firm, large berries, and stem but do not wash them. Weigh three-quarters of a pound of sugar to each pound of fruit, and arrange them in layers in your kettle; cover and let them stand all night (or if the weather is very hot and damp, do this in the early morning and cook them toward night). The next morning put the kettle on and bring the berries slowly to the boiling point and skim them. Simmer exactly fifteen minutes and take the kettle off the fire; cover it with a thin cloth and let it stand all night without moving. In the morning heat again, and skim; this time let it simmer exactly ten minutes and take off the kettle; drain off the juice and boil down for just five minutes, put the berries in, and put them in the cans and seal.' That's a queer rule," Dolly commented as she finished.
"It's perfectly splendid, and we will follow it to the letter and you shall see for yourself. Now remember this important thing that I am about to tell you, for it is something you must never lose sight of when you do up fruit: the reason why any fruit spoils, when you put it in good, air-tight cans, is that you have not sterilized the cans and covers, and have not used new rubbers each year."
"But just how do you sterilize cans?"
"Wash them, and then put them in the oven, tops and all, and bake them half an hour. Put the rubbers in hot water for fifteen minutes and wipe them dry. And always use glass cans with glass tops fastened on with wires. When you put the fruit away, find a place for it in a cool, rather dark closet. If you do all these things, none of it will ever 'turn' or spoil."
"Well, I'll impress it all on my mind. Now tell me what we are going to do up this summer, and all about it."
"Currants come first. I shall make jelly of some of those, and later on we will spice them and make conserve, and mix some with raspberries for another sort of jam."
"Does your jelly always 'jell?'"
"Always. It has to, whether it wants to or not. Most jellies are perfectly easy to make, so you can follow a good cook-book; currant jelly is the only sort you could ever have any trouble with, and that you need not have if you follow this rule. Write down:
"'Currant Jelly That Never Fails. Take currants that are barely ripe, and do not pick them just after a rain, when the juice is thin. Do not stem them or wash them, but look them over carefully and crush them in a crock with a wooden potato masher. Put them in a bag, and hang them up and let them drain all night. In the morning measure the juice and take just as much sugar, with the addition of one extra half-pint at the end; put this in the oven to heat. Put the juice on the fire and boil it twenty minutes, skimming it occasionally; then put in the hot sugar and stir till this is dissolved. Let it boil up hard just once, and take it from the fire immediately, for the jelly has come; longer boiling will prevent its ever setting. Pour it into glasses and put it in the sunshine for two days, then cover with paraffin and put it away. This is perfectly clear and of a fine flavor.'"
"So it is," Mrs. Thorne added, as Dolly copied the last words. "Next let us make a sort of list of what you can put up when you are where you can get fruits cheaply in summer. When you are in town you cannot well do them by the wholesale, but a glass or a can when you can find something reasonable, such as a box of nice berries one day, and a quart of nicer plums the next, and so on."
"Like winter preserves," said Dolly.
"Exactly. But now, as we happen to be in clover this summer, we must do up a lot of things. I have learned to alternate the fruits, one year doing one kind and the next leaving that sort out and taking another, for variety's sake; but as you are going to divide all the fruit with me this year and have half for your very own, we must do up heaps and piles of everything. I will tell you what we can make if we choose."
Dolly took her pencil again, and her sister gave her this list: "Take strawberries first; those you preserve and also make into jam. Then come cherries; like the strawberries, you use the Danish rule, taking less sugar if they are sweet, or the usual amount if they are sour. You can make spiced cherries to eat with meats, too; those are lovely. Currants you make into jelly, of course; to my mind it is the best kind of all. Then you spice them also, and make currant conserve, which is a mixture of currants, raisins and oranges, and awfully good. You also mix them with red raspberries for jam, and if you like, you make raspberry and currant jelly too. Raspberries you do up by the Danish rule, using the smaller amount of sugar, as they are sweet. Raspberry jam is very nice for a good many things, and I usually do up a good deal of that.
"Then come gooseberries; those you make into jam to eat with cream cheese – home-made Bar-le-Duc, you know. And you spice them exactly as you do currants. All those rules are in your cook-book.
"Pineapples you can with a good deal of sugar. Blackberries you can make into jam and jelly, and you can also can them, but to my mind they are pretty seedy except in jelly, and that is rather dark colored, not as pretty as most jellies. Still, all things are good for a change. Blueberries or huckleberries I can for tarts in winter.
"Then melons come on, and you can make watermelon sweet pickles, and also citron preserves. Plums come, too, about this time, and those you merely can, making them as sweet as you like. I put up greengages and purple plums in quantities, and use them for deep tarts in winter, saving eggs, you see, in my desserts. And I also make plum jelly and spiced plums, if I can get them at a cheap price.
"Peaches are your best preserve. I can them in a rather rich syrup, leaving them whole and putting in a good many kernels from their stones. Buy those carefully, for they are usually expensive. The bits left over I make into peach jam; it is the best thing for little tarts and to use with whipped cream in different ways. And of course I make spiced peaches, too. Pears I can, and I make pear conserve, out of pears, lemon and ginger-root; that is very good with cream cheese and crackers for lunch.
"Quinces I use in jelly, sometimes mixing apples with it, as it is apt to be a little high flavored. I also do up a few cans of preserves, and once in awhile I make a lovely conserve of quince, grapefruit and a few oranges; that I do later in the fall. Grapes I make into jelly, and I spice a lot, too. I make a marmalade with the skins and pulp and sugar, all boiled down together; and grape conserve, made of grape pulp and oranges and raisins, is one of my choicest things. Citron you preserve; it looks exactly like pineapple.
"By this time crab-apples come, and I spice some of those, and make a good deal of jelly, it is so clear and pretty. By the way, because your cook-book will not mention the fact, remember always to put half a lemon, cut up with its peel, into each kettle of hot jelly as you take it off the fire; just stir it in and leave it while you dip out the jelly. It gives a delicious flavor. And when you want geranium jelly, drop in three of four leaves of rose geranium with the lemon at the same time; you can bruise them a little if you like. Spiced crab-apple jelly is nice, too; you just add a bag of whole spices as it cooks. You see what a lot of things there are, and I am sure I could think up others if I tried. But probably you will learn more for yourself as you keep house, because every cook is experimenting nowadays, and you constantly hear of new things."
"I am sure I shall love to do up fruit; it looks so pretty when it is in the glass, and you feel so rich when you see it on your shelves."
"The worst of it is that it is the poetry of cooking, and all housekeepers love to do it up, love it not wisely but too well. They buy when they ought not, and put too much money in both fruit and sugar. Often they have to keep a lot over from year to year, which is not at all a good idea. So be on your guard and do not rashly buy and do up everything in sight every summer. Of course this one year, when we are economizing so in vegetables and milk, we can afford to spend more than usual in other things. Then, too, most of the fruit is right in our own garden, which is a wonderful stroke of good fortune and probably will not come our way twice. And I brought out that barrel of cans and glasses from town, so we shall not have to buy as many as we would otherwise; we shall have to buy some dozens, however, I am afraid."
"Don't you think we ought to do up some fruit for Aunt Maria, Mary?"
"Indeed I do. I am not sure whether she will like the idea, – though I hope she will like the fruit, – but I think we had better get out her own cans and fill them with the old-fashioned things she will be apt to enjoy, such as cherries and strawberries and quinces and watermelon rind. It will be fun to leave her some things, and goodness knows we ought to, after all we have had out of her garden."
"Do you ever do up vegetables?"
"I seldom have done that, but we must this year. We will do up some peas and corn and succotash, and string-beans and tomatoes, anyway."
"I thought vegetables didn't keep well if you did them up yourself."
"Get a good rule to begin with; you can get a perfect one by sending to Washington to the Bureau of Agriculture. Then sterilize your cans, and you won't have a bit of trouble. Spoiling used to be the bane of a housekeeper, for five times out of ten things would sour, and she could not tell what was the matter; but sterilize the cans, and you will be all right."
"And do you think you save a lot by doing up vegetables?"
"Of course you do – heaps of money; you can see how that is at a glance; and they are so much better than what you buy, too. Tomatoes I just peel and salt a little, and put in cans and stand them in a cold oven; then I make a fire and leave them till the tomatoes boil. I keep one extra canful ready to fill up the others from as I take them out, because they shrink a little as they cook; then I put on the covers. They come out six months later just as though they had just been gathered. You see how easy that is, especially as you scald the tomatoes instead of taking off the skin with a knife, as you do with fruits. String beans and peas I can so you would not know them from fresh ones. I pick them over and put them on in cold water and simmer them fifteen minutes; then I drain and measure them; to a quart of either I put in one level teaspoonful of salt and one of sugar, and to each four quarts one of soda; then I put them back in the kettle, just cover them with hot water, cook five minutes and can them in glass jars."
"Oh, Mary, that reminds me – pickles! You haven't said a word about those."
"To be sure. Well, I do up few of those, because we like sweet pickles made from fruit better than sour ones of vegetables; but you can make some tiny little cucumber pickles if you like, and chow chow, and chili sauce, and a sort of mince made of green tomatoes and cabbage and all sorts of things. You can study up on pickles, later on, and ask people who like to do them up about recipes, and decide, as time goes on, what you want. We have undertaken so much this summer that, except for chili sauce and a few jars of other things, I do not think we shall do much in the pickle line. Pickles are really not economical, because they do not serve as a food, as fruit and jellies and jams do; they are only a relish, after all. Still, they help out, especially at luncheon, so put up some when you keep house, by all means."
Picking over the strawberries and starting the process of preserving them, making up jam out of the smaller and poorer berries, and a hurried trip down town for more sugar, together with getting lunch and cleaning up the kitchen after all the work was done, consumed most of the day. It was not until toward night that Mrs. Thorne began to make preparations for dinner, and then she found that the beef left by the butcher had evidently not been kept in the ice-house, but had been exposed on the counter, and it had a distinct odor which was anything but pleasant.
"No wonder he drove off in such haste after he gave me the bundle," said Dolly indignantly. "Whatever shall we do, now, Mary? Go down-town for more?"
"No, it's much too hot, and we are too tired. We shall have a supper of some kind. Let me see; what can we have? I'm really too used up to think."
"Iced tea for one thing; that is made and ready, at least. But the kerosene-stove has got to be filled before we can cook anything, for the oil gave out just as we finished the last strawberry."
Mary looked apprehensive. "It did? My dear, that was the last drop in the house, and they won't deliver anything after four o'clock. And there's not a single stick of wood sawed, either, for that miserable boy, who promised to come back after handing in the berries, has never appeared at all."
"What will you do? Dick is sure to come home ravenous."
"There's the chafing-dish, blessings on it! And the alcohol bottle is full; even if all the other fuels have given out, that remains. We will stir up something in that and have a salad. Always have a chafing-dish, Dolly; there are times when life would not be worth living without it."
The emergency shelf of the pantry yielded a can of salmon, and this was drained and the bones removed, and a white sauce made for it in one of the pans of the dish. It was to be reheated and the fish put in it in the chafing-dish on the table. With this was to be bread and butter and iced tea.
"For a salad, Dolly, get those string-beans I cooked and set away this morning. Put them on lettuce and add French dressing; that will be very nice. For dessert I meant to have strawberries, but the very idea of them is nauseating after working with them all day."
"I should rather think so – strawberries, indeed! No, for once I am going over to neighbor Thomas' and borrow; that is the proper thing to do in the country, and I dare say they have felt slighted that we have not been before. Probably they think we are proud. I know they have more cream from that Jersey cow than they can possibly use, and I have an idea of a dessert I can make up all alone. Mary, do you think we shall ever be able to have a real live cow of our very own?"
"If we were going to live in the country the year around, I think somehow or other we ought to manage to have one. We should have to pay for hay and things in winter to feed it on, and get somebody to milk it, though, and I remember to have heard that caring for the milk was no small consideration when one has a small family. I rather think, when you counted up the first cost of a good cow and added the price of its care and food, you would find it was cheaper to buy milk; but wouldn't it be perfectly delightful never to have to economize on it? Think of the cream soups and ice-cream and custards and fresh cream cheese and everything else! Well, Dolly, dear, run along on your errand, for if we continue this subject you will see me dissolve in tears."
Their neighbor proved to have a bowl of cream she did not need and was glad to let Dolly have, and in a moment the cream-whipper was at work, and presently a mass of stiff whip was ready, sweetened, flavored and laid lightly on a cold glass dish. Then going to the pantry, a small paper box was found among the cracker boxes sent from town. This was full of lady-fingers. Half of it was used for the dessert, as they were split and arranged around the cream, and there was a most delicious mould of charlotte russe. As half the five-cent box of cakes was left over, this cost but a veritable song, thanks to the neighbor's kindness, which, by the way, was repaid later on by the gift of a strawberry shortcake.
Mary was getting the chafing-dish ready to light for the second time the moment the latch of the garden gate announced her husband's home-coming. Meanwhile she gave Dolly a talk on its uses.
"Always have a chafing-dish in the house," she began seriously. "When you need it at all, you need it dreadfully. Now, in a place like this, where you may be caught unawares at any moment with no fuel, you can see that we simply could not do without it. Of course in town we have the gas-stove, and that cooks just as well as this, but even there a chafing-dish is a good thing to own. On Sunday night, for supper, it is more fun to cook with this than it is to stir up things in the kitchen. Then, too, when you have people in during the evening, it is nice to have them sit around the table and chat while you get up a little supper with it. You can have so many good things in it, too, such as lobster, creamed or Newburg, and scrambled eggs mixed with green peppers or tomatoes, or creamed haddie, or cheese fondu or rarebit. And with sandwiches and coffee and salad, you can see you can have a really beautiful supper, the coffee in the machine on the sideboard or on one end of the table, the salad ready in its bowl, and the chafing-dish and hot plates in front of the hostess."
"Yes, of course it is fun to use one. I know lots of girls who make a regular business of learning how to make new things; they take cooking lessons on them."
"I know they do, but sometimes I am inclined to think they overdo that matter. You should not take a chafing-dish too seriously, in my opinion. It is invaluable in an emergency, and good at other times, but after all it is better to learn to cook on a range, and make all sorts of things, and then you can easily add on the chafing-dish cookery. In other words, it is an informal utensil for informal occasions, not for every-day use."
"Well, certainly to-night we needed it badly enough, and if Dick declines to saw wood this evening, as my prophetic soul says he will, we shall have to get breakfast on it too. What will you have?"