"Well, it takes money to fit out exploring expeditions," said Addison.
"But there are other discoveries fully as important as those in the far north, or in Africa; discoveries in science bring the best kind of fame, like those of Franklin, Morse, Tyndall, Darwin and Pasteur. There is no end to the discoveries that can be made in science. It is the great field for explorers, I think. Grand new discoveries will be made right along now, and the more there are made the more there will be made; for one scientific discovery always seems to open the way to another."
"Oh, but I don"t know anything about science," exclaimed Tom. "I don"t believe I ever shall."
"No one does without hard study," replied Addison. "But any one can afford to study if by doing so some splendid new invention can be brought about."
"Dora, what are we girls going to do?" said Kate, laughing. "It makes me feel lonesome to hear the boys talk of the great exploits they mean to perform."
"There doesn"t seem to be so much that girls can do," replied Theodora, with a sigh. "Still, I know of one thing I wish to do very much," she continued with a glance at Addison.
"What is it?" said Tom. "What are you going to astonish the world with?"
"Oh, I haven"t the courage to talk about it," replied Theodora. "And it looks so hard to me and I shall need to study so long to get prepared, that I sometimes think I never shall do it."
"Well, girls can all make school-mistresses," said Addison.
"Kate is going to make something besides a school-mistress," said Ellen.
"Kate means to study chemistry and be a chemist."
"She said last winter that she meant to learn how to telegraph and be a telegraph operator," said Halse, laughing.
"Yes, I did," replied Kate, coldly. "But I have changed my mind. I don"t know much about chemistry yet, but I think I like it. I mean to study it and I mean to learn all about drugs, too, and have a pharmacy in some large pleasant town. I"ll make as much money as Addison; for I think money is a great thing."
"Shall you have a soda-fountain in your drug store and sell soda with a "stick" in it?" asked Halse.
"I don"t think so," replied Kate. "But if I do, I shall hire somebody like you to tend the "stick" part of it."
Halse had sat poking fun at all the others, while they talked of their plans, pretending to be on the point of fainting away, when Addison, Tom and Theodora discussed different pursuits in life; and this retort from Kate hit him hard; he was angry. "I would not work for anyone with a tongue like yours," he exclaimed.
"Never mind," replied Kate. "We will not quarrel about that now. It is rather too far ahead. It will take you years and years to get education enough to tend a soda-fountain," she added, mischievously. "Perhaps you know enough already about putting the "stick" in it, as you call it; I"m rather afraid you do from what I heard your friend Alfred Batchelder say a few days ago. It doesn"t sound well for little boys like you to talk about "sticks" in soda."
Halse usually fared ill when he attempted jokes at Kate"s expense. It seemed odd to the rest of us that he did not learn to avoid such efforts; but he never did; he was always worsted, promptly, and always got angry. "Tom, if I had such a sister as you"ve got, I"d tie a hot potato in her mouth," he exclaimed.
"She is a terrible girl," said Tom, with a wink. "Her tongue is just like a new whalebone whip with a silk snapper on it. Takes the skin right off. But as she is all the sister I"ve got, I try to put up with her.
"She is a pretty good sister," he added, going across where Kate sat and sitting down beside her. "I don"t know what I should do without her."
"Thank you, Tommy dear," said Kate. "I know now that you want me to coax father to let you take "White-foot" (their colt) to the Fair. Perhaps I will; but it will not amount to anything. You will not get a premium on White-foot, if you take him. He isn"t big and handsome enough. You"ve looked at him till your eyes think he is, but he isn"t. I shall not tell father that I think he will take a premium, because I want father to respect my judgment more than that."
"Kate, you don"t know anything about colts!" cried Tom. "That"s the best colt in this town!"
"O my! O my!" groaned Kate. "Once let a boy begin to dote on a colt, particularly if he calls it _his_ colt, and he can soon see beauty, size, speed, everything else in it, in matchless perfection. It"s a kind of disease, a horse-disease that gets into his eye. Tom"s got it badly.
Please excuse his boasting!
"Here, Tom, pa.s.s this nice b.u.t.tered ear of corn over to Halse, and tell him that I didn"t mean to hurt his feelings--quite so badly," she added.
"I only meant to hurt them a little."
This was like Kate; she would always talk like that; but she rarely said more than was true and never treasured up ill-feeling, nor wished others to do so.
But Halse would not accept her peace-offering.
"Ah, well," sighed Ellen, "I really am afraid that there is nothing I shall ever be able to do that will bring me either fame or money. I cannot think of a thing that I am good for."
"Oh, yes, there is!" cried Addison. "You have a sure hand on pop-overs, Nell, pop-overs and cookies."
"Right, Ad, I can make pop-overs," replied Ellen, laughing. "Perhaps I can get a living, cooking."
"Well, that is a pretty important thing, I think," remarked Thomas, candidly. "Somebody must know how to cook, and I like to have victuals taste good."
"I do not think those who cook get much credit for their labors," said Kate. "Mother and I are cooking every day and our men folks come in, sit down at table and swallow it all, with never a word of praise when we cook well; but if we make a mistake, and bread, or cake, or pie does not taste quite right, then they will growl and look at us as surly as if we had never cooked well in all our lives. I think that is rather hard usage and poor thanks for long service. Mother does not mind it. "Oh, that is something you must get used to, Kate," she says to me. "Men folks always behave so. We never get much praise for our cooking." But I do mind it. When I"ve made a nice batch of tea rolls, or cakes, I want them to know it and to act as if they appreciated it."
"That is just the way it is at our house," said Ellen.
"Yes," remarked Theodora. "The only way our boys ever show that they appreciate our good biscuit, or cake, is by eating about twice as much of it, which of course makes it all the harder for us to cook more. When we get a poor batch of bread it will last twice as long as good;--that"s one comfort."
"Why, Doad, I never heard you talk like that before," said Halse, with a look of surprise.
"No more did I," remarked Addison. "Theodora, I am scandalized."
"I know it is horrid," she replied. "But I have thought it, if I never have said it, many and many a time, when I"ve nearly roasted myself over the hot stove, this summer, and thought I had enough cooked to last two days, at least; and then in would march you three hungry boys, to table, and eat it all up, eat my whole panful of doughnuts and finish off with eight or ten cookies apiece, just because they were good, or a little better than usual. If they had been a little poorer they would have lasted two days, surely."
"Doad, you are getting positively wicked," said Addison. "I don"t see what has come over you. You are not yourself."
"She is only telling the cold truth," exclaimed Kate. "Boys all seem to think that victuals grow ready cooked in the house somewheres, and that the more they can eat the better it ought to suit us. Here"s Tom, a pretty good sort of boy generally, but he will come into the pantry, after he has been racing about out-of-doors, and commit ravages that it will take me hours of hot, hateful work to repair. Oh, he is a perfect pantry scourge, a doughnut-and-cooky terror! Why, I have had what I knew must be half a big panful of doughnuts, or cookies, enough for supper and breakfast, certainly; and then about three or four o"clock of a hot August afternoon, I would hear Tom"s boots clumpering in the pantry, and by the time I would get there, he would be just sneaking out, grinning like a Chessy-cat, with his old mouth full and his pockets bulging out.
I will look in my pan and there will not be enough left to put on a plate once! Then I know I have got to build a fire, get on my old floury ap.r.o.n and go at it again, when I"ve just got cool and comfortable, after my day"s work!
"When he does that, I sometimes think I don"t know whether I love him well enough to cook for him, or not. For when he is hungry and comes tearing in like that, he will carry off more than he can eat. His eyes want all he sees. He will carry off lots more than he can possibly eat; I"ve found it, time and again, laid up out in the wood-shed; and once I found eight of my doughnuts hid in a hole in the garden wall. He thought that he could eat the whole panful, but found that he couldn"t."
"Oh, that was only laying up a store against days of famine," said Tom, calmly. "Some days the pantry is awfully bare; and Kate, too, has a caper of hiding the victuals. I call that a plaguey mean trick--when a fellow"s hungry! I clear the pan when I do find it, to get square with her."
"Well," Addison remarked, "the girls have presented their side of the work pretty strongly; but I rather guess the boys could say something on their side;--how they have to work in the hot sun, all day long, to plough and harrow and sow and plant and hoe the crops, to get the bread stuff to cook into food. The girls want cooked victuals, too, as well as we. The hot, hard work isn"t all on one side."
"That"s so!" echoed Tom and Halse, fervently.
"I often come in tired, hot and sweaty after a drink of water, in the sweltering summer afternoons, and find our girls in the cool sitting-room, rocking by the windows, looking as comfortable as you please, reading novels," continued Addison.
"That"s so!" we boys exclaimed.
"Not that I grudge them their comfort," Addison went on, laughing. "I don"t. I like to see them comfortable. Besides girls ought not to work so hard and long as boys; they are not so strong, nor so well able to work in the heat. But I think that a great deal of the hardship that Kate and Doad and Nell complain of, about cooking over the hot stove, is due to a bad method which all the women hereabouts seem to follow. They cook twice every day. Fact, they seem to be cooking all the time. They all do their cooking in stoves, with small ovens that will not hold more than three or four pies, or a couple of loaves of bread at once. By the next day they have to bake again, and so on. In summer, particularly, their faces are red from bending over the hot stove about half the time."
"But what would you do, Addison?" asked Theodora.
"I"ll tell you what I would do," replied Addison. "I would do just what I suggested to Gram last spring. The old lady was getting down to peep into the stove oven and hopping up again about every two minutes. She looked tired and her face was as red as a peony. "Gram," said I, "I"ll tell you what I"ll do, if you want me to. I"ll take the oxen and cart and go over to the Aunt Hannah lot, and draw home some brick there are in an old chimney over there; and then we will get a cask of lime and some sand for mortar, and have a mason come half a day and build you a good big brick oven, beside the wash-room chimney. It can be seven or eight feet long by four or five wide, big enough to bake all the pies, bread, pork and beans and most of the meat you want to cook for us, in a week. Then after you have baked, Sat.u.r.day afternoon, you no need to have much more cooking to do till the next Sat.u.r.day. All you need do over the stove will be to make coffee and tea, boil eggs and potatoes once in a while and warm up the food." "There"s an oven that goes with the sitting-room chimney," said she; "I used always to bake in it; but somehow I have got out of the way of it, since we began to use stoves."
I couldn"t get her to say that she wanted an oven, so I did nothing about it. But I know it would be a great deal easier, after she got the habit of it again."
"But how could you have hot tea-rolls every night and morning, Addison, with an oven like that?" asked Ellen.
"I should not want them, myself," replied Addison. "They nearly always smell so strongly of soda that I do not like them; and I do not think they are wholesome. For my own part I like bread better, or bread made into toast."