k after several experiments, because
they took so long--from one to three hours--for both the dried and the
fresh kinds, that the girls felt that they could not afford so much
alcohol. They eliminated turnips, too, after they had prodded a
frequent fork into some obstinate roots for about three quarters of an
hour. Beets were nearly as discouraging, but not quite, when they were
young and tender, and the same was true of cabbage.

"It's only the infants that we can use in this affair," declared Dorothy
after she had replenished the saucepan from another in which she had
been heating water for the purpose, over a second alcohol stove that her
mother had lent them. Spinach, onions and parsnips were done in half an
hour and potatoes in twenty-five minutes.

They finally gave up trying to cook vegetables whole over this stove,
for they concluded that not only was it necessary to have extremely
young vegetables but the size of the cooking utensils must of necessity
be too small to have the proceedings a success. They learned one way,
however, of getting ahead of the tiny saucepan and the small stove. That
was by cutting the corn from the cob and by peeling the potatoes and
slicing them very thin before they dropped them into boiling water. Then
they were manageable.

"Miss Dawson, the domestic science teacher, says that the water you cook
any starchy foods in must always be boiling like mad," Ethel Blue
explained to her aunt one day when she came out to see how matters were
going. "If it isn't the starch is mushy. That's why you mustn't be
impatient to put on rice and potatoes and cereals until the water is
just bouncing."

"Almost all vegetables have some starch," explained Mrs. Morton. "Water
_really_ boiling is your greatest friend. When you girls are old enough
to drink tea you must remember that boiling water for tea is something
more than putting on water in a saucepan or taking it out of a kettle on
the stove."

"Isn't boiling water boiling water?" asked Roger, who was listening.

"There's boiling water _and_ boiling water," smiled his mother. "Water
for tea should be freshly drawn so that there are bubbles of air in it
and it should be put over the fire at once. When you are waiting for it
to boil you should scald your teapot so that its coldness may not chill
the hot water when you come to the actual making of the tea."

"Do I seem to remember a rule about using one teaspoonful of tea for
each person and one