e table. She was enjoying herself thoroughly in spite
of the consciousness that it was all on a par with tissue-paper hats
and other affairs peculiar to the Happy-Go-Luckys, that queer club of
which she had heard.

"They get a lot of fun out of it. I don't see why the girls in our set
couldn't start one!"

While she pictured herself presiding over the new club, which no one
outside the favored few would be allowed to enter, the other girls,
after careful measuring, had placed on the range a pot half filled with
the materials necessary for the taffy of which Alene wished to make
enough not for themselves only, but to share liberally with all the Lee
and Bonner children.

"Sweets to make it sweet, and sours to make it sour, fire to heat,
water to dissolve, and butter to make it run down our throats!" intoned
Ivy like a witch making an incantation over her brew, while Alene,
taking a large spoon, kept stirring the mixture until, exhausted, she
was relieved by Hermione.

"Our motto is 'Keep Stirring,'" said Hermione; "but this takes so long
a time to thicken, my arm's about broke."

"I never made sugar taffy, but molasses doesn't take any time hardly!"
returned Laura.

After a consultation the mixture was emptied into a square, buttered
pan and carried to the porch to cool.

When Laura went out presently to test it, she uttered a cry of dismay.

"It's gone back to sugar, girls!" she announced when the others came
hastily to investigate.

Sure enough, instead of taffy ready for pulling, they found a sheet of
sugar that could be broken into pieces.

"Put the pan back on the stove with some water, and let it melt, so we
can try again," someone suggested.

They made surmises as to where the fault lay.

"Surely not in the stirring," cried Hermione, rubbing her elbow.

With renewed vigor they attacked the melted sugar--they stirred and
stirred. Even Vera lent a hand, and the stuff boiled and boiled but
thickened very slowly and when set out to cool hardened as before.

"Keep stirring! Indeed, I think if we stirred it from now until
doomsday it would stay just sugar," declared Laura.

"I'm sure I remember the recipe just as Kizzie told it," said the
disappointed Alene who, as head cook, felt responsible for the
disaster. "I'll run up to the sewing-room and ask Mrs. Major what she
thinks is wrong."

"Oh, girls, guess where the trouble was! In the stirring, after all,"
she said, returning a few minutes lat