cannot keep it so _sacredly_ fair and pure as Delia did for her. Only
one thing showed.

"I say," said Stephen, one morning, sliding by Ruth on the stair-rail
as they came down to breakfast, "do you look after that _piousosity_,
now, mornings?"

"No," said Ruth, laughing, "of course I can't."

"It's always whopped," said Stephen, sententiously.

Barbara got up some of her special cookery in these days. Not her very
finest, out of Miss Leslie; she said that was too much like the fox
and the crane, when Lucilla asked for the receipts. It wasn't fair to
give a taste of things that we ourselves could only have for very
best, and send people home to wish for them. But she made some of her
"griddles trimmed with lace," as only Barbara's griddles were trimmed;
the brown lightness running out at the edges into crisp filigree. And
another time it was the flaky spider-cake, turned just as it blushed
golden-tawny over the coals; and then it was breakfast potato, beaten
almost frothy with one white-of-egg, a pretty good bit of butter, a
few spoonfuls of top-of-the-milk, and seasoned plentifully with salt,
and delicately with pepper,--the oven doing the rest, and turning it
into a snowy soufflé.

Barbara said we had none of us a specialty; she knew better; only hers
was a very womanly and old-fashioned, not to say kitcheny one; and
would be quite at a discount when the grand co-operative kitchens
should come into play; for who cares to put one's genius into the
universal and indiscriminate mouth, or make potato-soufflés to be