Of course, things didn’t always go smoothly, even with Winona’s young energy and good-will hard at work. “Accidents will happen in the best regulated families” was a proverb whose meaning Winona learned thoroughly before she was through. There was, for instance, a tragic Saturday when she made ice-cream with most of the ice in the ice-box, and forgot to telephone for more. A sizzlingly hot Sunday dawned, with no ice to be had. So the Sunday chicken and lettuce were badly spoiled, not to mention various tempers. Winona, tired, hot, and with a consciousness of guilt, spent most of Sunday afternoon in the kitchen trying crossly to invent a Sunday night supper which did not need milk, eggs or salad. The day ended with a found-at-the-last-minute meal of potted tongue and canned peaches, and a general forgiveness all round, but it was a long time after that before Winona forgot it; indeed, she was known to get out of bed to take final peeps at the ice-chest and make sure it was filled.

Nevertheless, and in spite of all the mishaps that are bound to worry housekeepers, a light heart, a strong body and the fixed intention to make the best of things carried Winona triumphantly past her worries. Presently she found that things were settling into a regular routine, and that housekeeping was more interesting than hard. Best of all, she found she had a great deal of time to herself.

Then Tom came home. The Scouts had had to break up earlier than they expected, for two or three reasons. One was that Mr. Gedney had to get back to his business, another was that several of the boys worked, and had to get back, too. So Tom descended on his family, and Billy appeared next door. And things began to happen.

Tom tried faithfully not to be any trouble, and succeeded pretty well. And Mrs. Merriam’s ankle got better, slowly, as bad sprains do. Presently she was well enough to be taken in a wheel chair to see her friends. She usually went to spend the day.

One day everything seemed particularly calm and serene. Tom had wheeled the mother to the other end of town, early in the morning, and she was going to be taken for a long automobile ride by one of her friends. Tom had taken a pocketful of sandwiches, and gone off for a fishing-trip. So Winona built a mound of more sandwiches for herself and Florence, and prepared to take a day off.

She was curled up on the front porch in a hammock, reading, when the first thing occurred.

“Does Miss Winona Merriam live here?” inquired a familiar voice; and Winona, looking up, saw Louise, dusty and beaming.

“Oh, Louise, you angel! How lovely it is to see you!” she said, jumping up and hugging her friend.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Louise, hugging back. “I came down on the train, and I’m here to spend the day, if you want me.”

“Want you! I should think I did!” said Winona. “Come in and get cool.”

“I’m not hot,” said Louise, “but I would like a drink of water.”

They were in the kitchen, fussing about pleasurably together, when they heard steps clattering up the porch.

“It’s the ice-man,” said Winona. “I must pay him.”

She ran upstairs, and Louise went on helping herself to sandwiches. She had eaten three, and was considering whether she really wanted anything more till lunch-time, when a large, fishy hand dropped over her shoulder and took a handful of ham-and-lettuce ones.

“Tom Merriam! There won’t be enough for lunch if we both eat them! I thought you’d gone off fishing for the day.”

“So did I,” said Tom leisurely, “but I found I hadn’t. Where did you blow in from?”

“Camp,” she said. “Winona’s upstairs hunting for change. She thought you walked like the ice-man.”

“Poor Win! She has that ice-man on her mind,” said Tom. “Nay, nay, little one. For far other reason am I here.”

He struck an attitude, with the sandwich he hadn’t finished waving over his head.

“Got hungry?” asked Louise prosaically.

“Not at all,” said Tom. “It was this way. As I was purchasing bait, I met my father.”

“Well—did he send you home?”

“Not exactly. Only—there’s a convention in town. A ministers’ convention. And father’s met two long-lost college chums, which—or who—are coming here to dinner to-night. One has a wife. Better tell Winona, and have Clay put on some extra plates. And—I forgot—here’s a fish I caught before I used up my bait and met father. Have him boiled or something for dinner with some of that stuff like mayonnaise dressing with green things in.”

“Your father?” asked Louise frivolously.

“No, the fish!”

Tom rushed upstairs to change his clothes, while Louise thoughtfully ate another sandwich and called Winona.

Winona came running down the back stairs.

“Did you keep him?” she said. “I couldn’t find where I’d put the change.”

“It wasn’t the ice-man,” said Louise, “it was Tom.”

“Tom?” asked Winona. “But he was gone for the day.”

“Anyway, he’s back. And—Winona Merriam, we’ll have to make more sandwiches for supper, or dinner or whatever it is. Two ministers and one wife are coming here to dinner to-night.”

Winona sprang to her feet and snapped her book shut.

“Sandwiches!” she said scornfully. “Don’t you know you have to feed convention people? Mother would die, and the Ladies’ Aid faint in a body, if we gave them sandwiches for dinner. No. They have to have a course dinner!”

“Where are you going to get it?” asked Louise meekly.

“Here!” said Winona. “I found one in a magazine the other day. Let’s see what we can do with it.”

Louise looked at Winona with respect. “Do you often rise to occasions this way?” she asked.

“This is the almost human intelligence that I have sometimes,” said Winona.

“Sure it’s intelligence?” asked Louise doubtfully.

Winona led the way upstairs toward her scrapbook without deigning to reply. Both girls bent eagerly over the course dinner she had pasted in on the last page.

“Shellfish, soup, fish, salad, roast, entrees, vegetables, dessert, black coffee, cheese, nuts and raisins,” she read. “These, in the order named, constitute a simple dinner.”

“I’d like to know who brought up the woman who wrote that,” commented Louise. “The Emperor of Russia, I should think.”

“Anyway, I am going to try to have it,” said Winona. “We can have oysters to begin with, because Tom always has some around for bait.”

“That kind mayn’t be good to eat,” objected Louise.

“Never mind. Perhaps these people won’t know the difference, just think they’re a brand-new kind.”

“You don’t open them till the very last thing, and then you serve them with ice on their heads to keep them cool, and lemon slices. I know that much,” said Louise, following Winona downstairs again.

“Then we won’t open them till the very last thing, and forget all about them till Tom comes downstairs again,” said Winona with decision. “Soup—let’s see. Oh, I know! Mother had me make some bouillon this morning, for old Mrs. Johnson down in Hallam’s Alley. We’ll serve that in the bouillon cups, and make Mrs. Johnson some more to-morrow, or take her chewing-tobacco instead. She’d much rather have it, she says.”

“All right. And Tom brought some fish in,” supplied Louise.

They went out to inspect the fish, and found that there would be plenty, if it was carefully distributed.

“Doesn’t everything dovetail beautifully?” said Winona thankfully. “What’s next?”

“Salad,” said Louise, consulting the scrapbook. “Haven’t you any lettuce in the garden?”

“Of course we have!” said Winona. “All there is to do is to pick it.”

“Well—the roast?”

But here there was a deadlock.

“There isn’t a thing in the house to roast,” said Winona, “and this time of year you have to telephone early to get things.” She moved to the telephone, and pulled herself back in dismay. “This is Wednesday!” she said. “And all the shops are closed Wednesday afternoon!”

“It isn’t afternoon, yet,” said Louise.

“Look at the clock,” said Winona.

And it was afternoon—one o’clock.

“Perhaps that’s a stray butcher,” said Louise, as they heard a long, loud knock at the kitchen door.

But it was only Billy Lee, who explained that he had tried every door but this in vain. He had a note to Winona from his sister. He perched himself on the stationary tubs while she read it, on the chance that she might want to write an answer.

“Come over and stay with me this afternoon,” it said. “I have a headache.”

“Oh, I can’t, Billy!” explained Winona, looking up from the note. “We have dinner to get for two ministers and their wife, and—Billy, you have a great deal of steady common sense. I heard father say so. What would you do if there wasn’t any meat, or any time to get any, or any place to get it?”

Billy tucked his foot under him, and looked serious, mechanically taking a sandwich as he thought. The girls were eating them, too, for it had been silently agreed that that would be all the lunch they would bother with.

“Why not try Puppums?” he suggested. “If they’re missionaries they’re used to roast dog. Every missionary has to learn to like it in the last year of his course.”

“Yes, or we might roast Clay,” said Louise scornfully. “Why don’t you suggest that? He isn’t any use, goodness knows, and they may have been missionaries to the cannibals!” She glanced at the small darky, who was sitting on the cellar door in happy idleness, singing fragments of popular songs to himself.

“You ought to make him useful,” said Billy. “Here, Clay, get up and help your young ladies.”

“Ah is helpin’ ’em,” said Clay with dignity; nevertheless he rose and came in for further orders.

“Down home,” continued Billy, “we always kill a chicken when we expect a minister.”

“But we haven’t so much as a papier-mache Easter chick,” objected Louise.

“The people next door but one have,” said Winona excitedly, starting up. “It’s against the law to keep chickens within the city limits, but they do it. But they’re away for the day.”

“They’re always getting into your garden and tempting poor old Puppums to chase them,” said Billy sympathetically.

Winona, acting on his suggestion, went to the door and looked out.

“Yes,” she said. “There’s one there now. There nearly always is.”

Louise lifted one eyebrow. “Well?” said she.

“Very well,” said Winona. “Come on, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to catch a next-door-but-one chicken, and pay the Janeways for him to-morrow.”

“When Puppums caught one last week,” said Florence, appearing suddenly, evidently in full possession of the conversation, “you tied it round his neck!”

She went down under the tubs to extract the wronged animal and sympathize with him on the injustice of life. But only Puppums heard her, for Billy and Winona, hindered by Clay, were careering wildly about after a vociferous, very agile fowl. It was finally captured with a crab-net, and led away to execution by Clay. It appeared that he, also, had had experience in chicken-killing for clergymen. He had often done it, he said, very artistically.

As he and the rooster passed on their way to the scaffold, Winona ran into the kitchen, and out again with a scream.

“It’s Henry!” she said wildly. “It’s Henry! We’ve caught the Janeways’s pet rooster! Clay! Clay!”

“Yas’m!” said Clay, appearing with Henry’s head in one hand and his body in the other. “Dis heah roosteh she certn’ly is good an’ daid! I c’n fix ’em!”

“And they loved him so!” said Winona tragically. “They were telling mother only yesterday how intellectual he was. ‘Not clever, merely,’ Mrs. Janeway said, ‘but really intellectual, my dear Mrs. Merriam!’”

Billy clutched the tubs in order to laugh better, and Louise sat down just where she was, on the floor.

“What’s the matter?” called Tom, running downstairs very clean and tidy.

“Winona’s murdered the Janeways’s intellectual rooster!” explained Billy; and lay back on the tubs again.

Tom, too, began to howl.

“What—Henry?” he said, when he could speak. “Oh, Winnie, you have done it! They’ve had him in the family since their grandfather’s time anyway. Well, you’d better make the best of it, and have Clay take out his interior decorations. Maybe we can eat him if you boil him long enough. I could have robbed the Martins’s tank of their tame goldfish if I’d known you wanted a dinner of household pets.” He sat down on the tubs by Billy and went off again.

“I suggested Puppums in the first place!” gurgled Billy.

“Never mind, Win,” said Louise, going over to Winona, who stood mournfully by the window, “I’ll attend to Henry. We’ll boil him first and then bake him, and he’ll be quite good. I’ll make the stuffing for him, too. I know how quite well.”

“Oh, thank you, Louise!” and Winona brightened up.

“Oh,” teased Billy, “then the remorse isn’t because he’s Henry, but because he’s tough?”

“It’s both,” said Winona, “but there’s no use being uselessly remorseful when you have work to do. I can feel ever so badly about it when I go to bed to-night. I often do. The fish is all right, anyway, and I’m going to make some sauce hollandaise for it out of the cookbook. Really all you need to know how to cook is a cookbook and intelligence.”

“I see the cookbook, but where——” began Tom.

“Billy Lee,” said Winona firmly, “if you came to see Tom, won’t you please take him out on the front porch and see him?”

“I didn’t!” said Billy coolly. “I came to bring Nataly’s note, and I’m staying to see you invent a ten-course dinner, if you’ll let me. Let me stay to dinner, Henry and all, and I’ll make your fish-sauce. All you need is a cookbook and intelligence——”

“Two clergymen,” counted Winona, “one wife, father, Louise, Tom, me—Florence is going out to supper, she said this morning. You’ll just make eight, Billy. Come and welcome, only please leave the fish-sauce alone.”

But Billy had already tied himself into a big pink apron, and was mixing butter and flour in a saucepan with every sign of knowing what he was about.

There was a brief, tense silence while the chicken, some white potatoes and onions, were put on to boil, sweet potatoes laid in the oven to be baked, and Clay sent into the garden for lettuce and radishes. They did not light any of the gas-stove burners except the one under the late Henry, because the afternoon was yet long. They went out on the porch and talked for a couple of hours. There was a general feeling that they mustn’t get too far away from the dinner.

About four Winona remembered to say to Tom, “Have you any bait-clams or oysters? We need them for our first course.”

“Bait!” said Tom. “Considering we’ve stolen the meat from the neighbors, and robbed the poor of the soup, and I caught the fish, we can afford to buy a few blue-points. I’ll go down and get them. Is there anything else you’d like while I’m down town?”

“Is it too late to order ice-cream?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “The ice-cream places won’t be open till five-thirty, and then only for an hour, you know.”

“The dairies are,” Winona remembered. “Please buy some cream on your way back, and we’ll find a receipt and make it. There are nuts and raisins in the house. Crackers—cheese.... I think we’ll have enough for dinner.”

“I shouldn’t wonder!” said her brother thoughtfully, as he walked away to get his wheel.

The others went back to the kitchen, and Billy went on with his sauce hollandaise—that is, he took it out of the bowl of water where it had been cooling, and put it in the ice-chest.

“Why, it’s good!” said Winona, rather impolitely, having sampled it on its way.

“Of course it’s good!” said Billy serenely. “Didn’t I ever tell you about our old cook down south, and how I adored her? I used to tag round after her all the time when I was small—never would stay with my nurse—and I learned a lot of things. And seeing I’m going to be invited to this banquet, looks like I’d better make the ice-cream for you.”

“Oh, can you?”

“Watch me!” said Billy for all answer.

As a matter of fact, when Tom got back with the blue-points and the cream, he and Billy went to work together, and they compounded a pineapple ice-cream that was fit for the gods. Louise, meanwhile, stuffed the parboiled fowl and put him in to roast. The boys captured Clay, who had gone back to his cellar door and his songs, and set him to crushing ice. Winona sat down on the tubs where Billy had been, and gave herself up to deep thought. The entree had not yet been solved.

“Pancake batter?” she said aloud at last, in a mildly conversational tone.

“I’m sure of it,” said Billy, poking his head in from the back porch.

“If I take that pancake batter I got ready for to-morrow morning, sweeten it, and put butter and eggs and peaches in it, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be peach fritters. Anyway I can try ... then you drop them in the lard....”

She thought it over a little longer silently. Then she jumped down, and went into the cellar for the batter and the peaches, and brought them out on the back porch, near the ice-box, to experiment with. Tom had gone back to the pantry to see if there was cake enough, but Billy was still packing ice and salt around the ice-cream.

“Dear me!” said Winona, setting down her load on a low shelf. “I hate to see you doing all this. You’re company, you know, and here we’re letting you get a lot of the dinner. It worries me!”

“Don’t let it,” counselled Billy, tossing a lock of hair out of his eyes and going on with the packing. “I’m having a good time. To tell you the truth, I always have a good time over here. I rather feel as if I belonged to the family—and that’s a nice feel to have. You’re a good little chum, Winnie.... If you don’t let me pack all the freezers and things I want to I’ll just have to go back to merely being let in once in awhile, like company.”

“I feel as if you belonged to the family, too, Billy,” said Winona sincerely, “and if your packing freezers is any sign you do, go right on, please.”

“I am,” Billy assured her with his usual placidity.

“The lard’s hot, Win! Come see if they’ll frit!” called Louise from within; and Winona dashed off with her batter. But it was nice to have Billy feel that way about things. He was certainly the nicest boy she knew....

They began together, she and Louise, to drop the yellow batter into the fat, while Clay and the boys turned the freezer by turns. Louise and Winona had become so excited about their dinner by this time that a mere fritter-sauce was nothing. They made one, it seemed to them afterwards, looking back, without knowing how they did it, and it was very good at that.

“Oysters, soup, fish, salad,” muttered Winona for the twentieth time. “I believe everything’s ready but the cream, and that must be almost finished. Boys!” she called out through the back door, “will you please go and deck yourselves for the feast? Wear your tuxedos, please. We’re going to keep up the Merriam reputation for hospitality, or die in the attempt!”

“All right—just wait till we pack it,” Tom called back.

But she saw that they had separated in quest of their evening clothes before she left. Tom had just acquired his first set, and wasn’t particularly fond of them. But he put them on meekly, just the same.

“We’d better dress, too,” said Louise. “I’ll run over home and slip some things in a suitcase, and be right back again.”