Chapter 6

A CANDY PULL.

Of all things in the world, what should grandmamma propose but my sending for Miss Muffet! Great-aunt Jessamine had gone away long before.

"I believe it was to-day that the girls meant to have the candy pull at Jeanie's, wasn't it?" grandmamma asked.

"Yes, darling grandmamma," I said, "they may have it; but I am not going to desert you."

"Thee is very kind, dearie," replied grandmamma; "but I need only quiet, and Hetty will come out of her attack just as well without thee as with thee. I particularly wish that thee would go. How is thee to have the fair unless thee has the candy pull? The time is passing, too. It will soon be school and lessons again."

So, at grandmamma's urging, I went for Miss Muffet. The little woman came without much delay, and took hold, as she expressed it, looking after both our invalids; and in the meantime telling me how to broil a steak for my grandmamma's and our own dinner, and how to fry potatoes so that they should not be soaked with grease.

A girl I know gained a set of Dickens' works by broiling a steak so as to please her father, who was a fastidious gentleman, and said he wanted it neither overdone nor underdone, but just right.

For broiling you need a thick steak, a clear fire, and a clean gridiron. Never try to broil meat over a blaze. You must have a bed of coals, with a steady heat. The steak must not be salted until you have turned each side to the fire; and it must be turned a good many times and cooked evenly. It will take from five to seven minutes to broil it properly, and it will then have all the juices in, and be fit for a king.

I don't know that kings have any better food than other gentlemen, but one always supposes that they will have the very best.

A steak may be cooked very appetizingly in the frying pan; but the pan must be very hot, and have no grease in it. Enough of that will ooze from the fat of the steak to keep it from sticking fast. A good steak cooked in a cold frying-pan and simmering in grease is an abomination. So declares Miss Muffet, and all epicures with her.

To fry potatoes or croquettes or any other thing well, one must have plenty of lard or butter or beef drippings, as she prefers, and let it boil. It should bubble up in the saucepan, and there should be enough of it to cover the wire basket in which the delicately sliced potatoes are laid--a few at time--to cook. They will not absorb fat, because the heat, when the first touch of it is given, will form a tight skin over them, and the grease cannot pierce this. They will be daintily brown, firm and dry.

But this isn't telling of our candy pull.

We had set our hearts on having fun and doing good--killing two birds with one stone, as Al Fay said. But I do not approve of that proverb, for certainly no _girl_ ever wishes to kill a bird; no more does a decent boy think of such a thing.

We resolved to have a fair and to sell candy at it, making every bit ourselves.

Therefore we had sent out some invitations to girls not of the club, and to some of the nicest boys. They were as follows:

The Clover Leaf Club of Bloomdale requests the pleasure of your company at the house of Miss Jeanie Cartwright, on Friday evening, September 8, at eight o'clock. Candy pull.

MILLY VAN DOREN, _President._

LOIS PARTRIDGE, _Secretary._

I had my doubts all day as to whether it would be right for me to go; but about four o'clock Aunt Hetty, looking as well as ever, came out of her room in a stiffly starched gingham gown, and proceeded to cook for herself a rasher of bacon and some eggs. Grandmamma was up and reading one of her favorite books; and Miss Muffett, who had stepped over to her house to attend to her sister and the parrot, came back declaring her intention to stay all night.

"So, my darling child, you may go, and welcome."

Away went my doubts and fears, and I tripped merrily down the street to Jeanie's, feeling the happier for a letter from mother, which I found at the post office.

Our candy was to be sold for a cent a stick, but the sticks were not scanty little snips by any means. Mrs. Cartwright made us a present of the molasses, Lois brought the sugar from home, Al Fay brought the saleratus, Patty remembered about the vinegar, and Marjorie produced the butter.

These were the ingredients: a half-gallon of New Orleans molasses, a cup of vinegar, a piece of butter as large as two eggs, a good teaspoonful of saleratus dissolved in hot water.

We melted the sugar in the vinegar, stirred it into the molasses, and let it come to the boil, stirring steadily. The boys took turns at this work.

When the syrup began to thicken we dropped in the saleratus, which makes it clear; then flouring our hands, each took a position, and pulled it till it was white.

The longer we pulled, the whiter it grew. We ate some of it, but we girls were quite firm in saving half for our sale.

Then we made maple-sugar caramels. Have you ever tried them? They are splendid. You must have maple sugar to begin with; real sugar from the trees in Vermont if you can get it. You will need a deep saucepan. Then into a quart of fresh sweet milk break two pounds of sugar. Set it over the fire. As the sugar melts, it will expand. Boil, boil, boil, stir, stir, stir. Never mind if your face grows hot. One cannot make candy sitting in a rocking-chair with a fan. One doesn't calculate to, as Great-aunt Jessamine always says.

The way to test it when you _think_ it is done is to drop a portion in cold water. If brittle enough to break, it is done. Pour into square buttered pans, and mark off while soft into little squares with a knife.

Some people like cream candy. It is made in this way: three large cupfuls of loaf-sugar, six tablespoonfuls of water. Boil, without stirring, in a bright tin pan until it will crisp in water like molasses candy. Flavor it with essence of lemon or vanilla; just before it is done, add one teaspoonful of cream of tartar. Powder your hands with flour, and pull it until it is perfectly white.

_Plain Caramels_.--One pound of brown sugar, a quarter of a pound of chocolate, one pint of cream, one teaspoonful of butter, two tablespoonfuls of molasses. Boil for thirty minutes, stirring all the time; test by dropping into cold water. Flavor with vanilla, and mark off as you do the maple caramels.

Home-made candy is sure to be of good materials, and will seldom be harmful unless the eater takes a great quantity. Then the pleasure of making it counts for something.

Our little fair was held the day after the candy pull, and the boys put up a tent for us in Colonel Fay's grounds. Admission to the tent was five cents. We sold candy, cake, ice-cream, and--home-made bread, and our gains were nineteen dollars and ten cents. There were an apron table, and a table where we sold pin-cushions and pen-wipers; but our real profits came from the bread, which the girls' fathers were so proud of that they bought it at a dollar a loaf. With the money which came from the fair, we sent two little girls, Dot and Dimpsie, our poorest children in Bloomdale, where most people were quite comfortably off, to the seaside for three whole weeks.

I do not know what we would have done in Bloomdale if Dot and Dimpsie had not had a father who would rather go off fishing, or lounge in the sun telling stories, than support his family. Everybody disapproved of Jack Roper, but everybody liked his patient little wife and his two dear little girls, and we all helped them on.

There was no excuse for Jack. He was a tall, strong man, a good hunter, fisher and climber, a sailor whenever he could get the chance to go off on a cruise; but he would not work steadily. He did not drink, or swear, or abuse his wife; but he did not support her, and if people called him Shiftless Jack, he only laughed.

As he was the only person in Bloomdale who behaved in this way, we did what mother calls condoning his offences--we called on him for odd jobs of repairing and for errands and extra work, such as lighting fires and carrying coals in winter, shoveling snow and breaking paths, weeding gardens in summer, and gathering apples in the fall. We girls determined to take care of Dot and Dimpsie, and help Mrs. Roper along.

They were two dear little things, and Mrs. Roper was very glad of our assistance.

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