I don't know," said Mrs. Gardiner. "I hadn't given it a
thought. I don't believe there's anything left from dinner. Run down to
the store, will you, and get a couple of porterhouse steaks, there's a
dear. And stop at the baker's as you come by and get us each a cream
puff for dessert. Betty is so fond of them." Migwan returned to the
kitchen and got her mother's pocketbook. There was just twenty-five
cents in it. Migwan realized with a shock that it would not pay for what
her mother wanted, and her sensitive nature shrank from asking to have
things charged.

"I won't buy the cream puffs," she decided. "I wonder if there is
anything in the house I could make into a dessert?" Search revealed
nothing but a bag of prunes, which had been on the shelf for months, and
were as dry as a bone. They did not appeal to Migwan in the least, but
there was nothing else in evidence. "I might make prune whip," she
thought rather doubtfully. "They're pretty hard, but I can soak them.
I'll need the oven to make prune whip, so I will bake the potatoes too."
She hunted around for the potatoes and finally found them in a small
paper bag. "Buying potatoes two quarts at a time must be rather
expensive," she reflected. She put the prunes to soak and the potatoes
in the oven and went down to the store. "How much is porterhouse steak?"
she asked before she had the butcher cut any off.

"Twenty-eight cents a pound," answered the man behind the counter.
Migwan gave a little gasp. The money she had would not even buy a pound.

"How much is round steak?" she inquired.

"Twenty-two," came the reply.

"Give me twenty-five cents' worth," she said. It did not look
particularly tender and Migwan thought distressedly how her mother would
complain when she found round steak instead of porterhouse. "But there
is no help for it," she said to herself grimly, "beggars cannot be
choosers." She stopped on the way home to get the recipe for prune whip
from Sahwah. Sahwah was not at home, but her mother gave Migwan the
recipe and added many directions as to the proper mixing of the
ingredients. "Is--is there any way of making tough round steak tender?"
she asked timidly, just a little ashamed to admit that they had to eat
round steak.

"There certainly is," answered Mrs. Brewster. "You just pound all the
flour into it that it will take up. I hardly ever buy porterhouse steaks
any more since I learned that trick. I am having some to-night. It is
one of our fa