re two loaves of bread ready,
those long round, crimply ones, you know, and then I'll put it all
together and all you'll have to do is to brown it. And I'll show you how
to make the club-sandwiches after lunch. You might as well learn once for
all, you know. There's bacon in the house, isn't there?"

"No, dey ain't; is yo' fren's gwine stay ter breakfus'?"

"Oh, no, I'd want the bacon for the club-sandwiches. Don't worry, Mancy,
they'll all come out right."

"Dey mought and den again dey moughtn't," grumbled the old woman, but
undaunted Patty went on measuring and weighing with a surety of success
that is found only in the young and inexperienced.

At one o'clock Marian walked out into the kitchen.

"Good gracious, Patty Fairfield," she exclaimed, "what are you doing? And
what are all those things? Do you expect the Democratic Convention to be
entertained here, or are you going to give the Sunday-school a picnic?
And are we never to have lunch? I'm simply starving!"

Patty turned a flushed face to her cousin, and looked dazed and
bewildered.

"Two and five-eighths ounces of sugar," she said, "spun to a thread; add
chopped nuts and the well-beaten whites of six eggs; brown with a
salamander. Marian, I haven't any salamander!"

The tragic tone of Patty's awful avowal was too much for Marian, and she
dropped into a kitchen chair and went off into peals of laughter.

"Patty," she cried, "you goose! What are you doing? Just making up the
whole recipe-book, page by page? I believe you're crazy!"

"It's for the Tea Club," exclaimed Patty, "and I want things to be nice."

"H'm," said Marian, "and _are_ they nice?"

She glanced at some of the completed delicacies on the table, and Patty,
seeing the look, turned red again, but this time it was not the effect of
the kitchen range.

"Well," she said, "some of them aren't quite right, but I think the
others will be."

"And I think you're working too hard," said Marian kindly. "You come
away with me now, and rest a little bit; and, Mancy, you put a little
lunch for us on the dining-room table, won't you? Just anything will do,
you know."

CHAPTER XII

A TEA CLUB TEA

Patty rebelled at being overruled in this manner, but Marian had some
Fairfield firmness of her own, and taking her cousin's arm led her to the
library and plumped her down upon the couch in a reclining position,
while she vigorously jammed pillows under her head.

"There, miss," she announ