One day, after they had been so engaged for about four months, Mrs.
Hardy said at breakfast: "I am going to try an experiment. I have
given the cook leave to go out for the day. Mr. and Mrs. Partridge
are coming to dinner, and I intend handing over the kitchen to the
girls, and letting them make their first essay. We are going to
have soup, a leg of mutton with potatoes and spinach, a dish of
fried cutlets, and a cabinet pudding. I shall tell Sarah to lift
any saucepan you may want on or off the fire, but all the rest I
shall leave in your hands. The boys will dine with us. The hour
will be half-past five, punctually."

The little girls' eyes flashed with pleasure, and they quite
colored up at the thought of the importance and difficulty of the
task before them. At lunch the boys pretended to eat an extra
quantity, saying that they felt very doubtful about their dinner.
In the afternoon Mrs. Hardy felt strongly tempted to go into the
kitchen to see how things were getting on; but she restrained
herself, resolving to let Maud and Ethel have entirely their own
way.

The dinner was a great success, although the soup was rather hot,
from Ethel, in her anxiety, having let too much pepper slip in; and
the cabinet pudding came up all over the dish, instead of
preserving its shape, it having stuck to the mold, and Maud having
shaken it so violently that it had come out with a burst and broken
up into pieces, which had caused a flood of tears on the part of
the little cook. It did not taste any the worse, however. And when
the little girls came in to dessert in their white frocks, looking
rather shy, and very scorched in the face, from their anxious
peeping into pots to see that all was going on well, they were