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The Corner House Girls on a Tour
The Corner House Girls on a Tour / Where they went, what they saw, and what they found
CHAPTER I – A RED LETTER DAY INDEED
There was a deal of bustle and a twittering like an eager flock of sparrows in the big kitchen of the old Corner House, which stood facing Main Street in Milton, but with its long side and rear yard and garden running far back on Willow Street.
The four Kenway girls had the room all to themselves at this early hour on Saturday morning, for Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah Maltby had not yet come downstairs, while Linda, the maid, had deserted the kitchen and pantry altogether for the time being.
Ruth, the eldest and most sedate of the sisters, was filling sandwiches at the dresser – and such a variety as there was of them!
Chicken, with mayonnaise and a lettuce leaf; pink ham cut thin and decorated with little golden dabs of mustard; peanut butter sandwiches; nut and cheese sandwiches, the filling nestling in a salad leaf, too; tuna fish, with narrow slices of red, red Spanish peppers decorating it; and of course sardines, carefully split and laid between soda crackers. What picnic lunch would be complete without sardines?
Agnes, the next oldest to Ruth and the beauty of the family, was slicing bread as exactly as though it were a problem in geometry and in such quantity that Tess declared it looked as though they were to feed an army.
Tess herself was seriously attending to the boiling of two dozen eggs in a big saucepan.
“Though why you need to watch ’em so closely I can’t see,” complained Agnes. “There are other things you might be doing when there is so much to do – goodness knows! Those eggs won’t get away.”
“No,” joined in Dot, the youngest of the Corner House girls, and quite seriously, too. “No. It isn’t like boiling lobsters.”
“Right, Dottums,” chuckled Agnes, recovering from her vexation immediately. “Eggs are an entirely different kind of shellfish.”
“Well,” said the little girl, explaining, “Mrs. Adams boiled some raw lobsters the other day, and one hopped right out of the pot on to the floor and started for the door – it really did!”