her. Stretch out your feet as lazily as you like on my
new goatskin rug. You are our only home-friend in San Francisco; and
oh, how mamma will spoil you whenever she has the chance! Now talk to
each other cosily while the 'angel of the house' cooks dinner."

It may be mentioned here that as Mrs. Chadwick's monthly remittances
varied from sixty to seventy-five dollars, but never reached the
promised eighty-five, Polly had dismissed little Yung Lee for a month,
two weeks of which would be the Christmas vacation, and hoped in this
way to make up deficiencies. The sugar-bowl and ginger-jar were
stuffed copiously with notes of hand signed "Cigar-box," but held a
painfully small amount of cash.

"Can't I go out and help Polly?" asked Edgar, a little later. "I
should never have agreed to stay and dine if I had known that she was
the cook."

"Go out, by all means; but you need n't be anxious. Ours is a sort of
doll-house-keeping. We buy everything cooked, as far as possible, and
Polly makes play of the rest. It all seems so simple and interesting
to plan for two when we have been used to twelve and fourteen."

"May I come in?" called Edgar from the tiny dining-room to Polly, who
had laid aside her Sunday finery and was clad in brown Scotch gingham
mostly covered with ruffled apron.

"Yes, if you like; but you won't be spoiled here, so don't hope it.
Mamma and I are two very different persons. Tie that apron round your
waist; I 've just begun the salad-dressing; is your intelligence equal
to stirring it round and round and pouring in oil drop by drop, while I
take up the dinner?"

"Fully. Just try me. I 'll make it stand on its head in three
minutes!"

Meanwhile Polly set on the table a platter of lamb-chops, some delicate
potato chips which had come out of a pasteboard box, a dish of canned
French peas, and a mound of currant-jelly.

"That is good," she remarked critically, coming back to her apprentice,
who was toiling with most unnecessary vigor, so that the veins stood
out boldly on his forehead. "You're really not stupid, for a boy; and
you have n't 'made a mess,' which is more than I hoped. Now, please
pour the dressing over those sliced tomatoes; set them on the
side-table in the banquet-hall; put the plate in the sink (don't stare
at me!); open a bottle of Apollinaris for mamma,--dig out the cork with
a hairpin, I 've lost the corkscrew; move three chairs up to the
dining-table (oh, it's so charmin