"Open all that doth hap to be closed," cried Nancy, embracing Olive
excitedly. "Light the bonfires on the encroaching hills. Set casks
a-tilt, and so forth."

"It's the German letter!" said Gilbert at a venture.

"What is the dinner, Kitty?" Mother Carey asked.

"New potatoes and string beans from the aft garden. Stale bread made
into milk toast to be served as a course. Then, not that it has anything
to do with the case, but just to give a style to the meal, Julia has
made a salad out of the newspaper."

Nancy created a diversion by swooning on the grass; a feat which had
given her great fame in charades.

"It was only the memory of Julia's last newspaper salad!" she murmured
when the usual restoratives had been applied. "Prithee, poppet, what
hast dropped into the dish to-day?"

Julia was laughing too much to be wholly intelligible, but read from a
scrap in her apron pocket: "'Any fruit in season, cold beans or peas,
minced cucumber, English walnuts, a few cubes of cold meat left from
dinner, hard boiled eggs in slices, flecks of ripe tomatoes and radishes
to perfect the color scheme, a dash of onion juice, dash of paprika,
dash of rich cream.' I have left out the okra, the shallot, the
estragon, the tarragon, the endive, the hearts of artichoke, the
Hungarian peppers and the haricot beans because we hadn't any;--do you
think it will make any difference, Aunt Margaret?"

"It will," said Nancy oracularly, "but all to the good."

"Rather a dull salad I call it," commented Gilbert. "Lacks the snap of
the last one. No mention of boned sprats, or snails in aspic, calves'
foot jelly, iced humming birds, pickled edelweiss, or any of those
things kept habitually in the cellars of families like ours. No dash of
Jamaica ginger or Pain-killer or sloe gin or sarsaparilla to give it
piquancy. Unless Julia can find a paper that gives more up-to-date
advice to its country subscribers, we'll have to transfer her from the
kitchen department to the woodshed."

Julia's whole attitude, during this discussion of her recent culinary
experiments, was indicative of the change that was slowly taking place
in her point of view. The Careys had a large sense of humor, from mother
down as far as Peter, who was still in the tadpole stage of it. They
chaffed one another on all occasions, for the most part courteously and
with entire good nature. Leigh Hunt speaks of the anxiety of certain
persons to keep their minds quiet lest any moti