Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/312

 286  seemed to be some vague connection between frogs and fishes) were compelled to decline offers of all the fish plates belonging to the four families. The potato salad, garnished with lettuce from the cottage garden was to be eaten with Mrs. Bennett's best salad forks. The roasted chicken was not to be entrusted to the not-always-reliable cottage oven but was to be cooked at the Tucker's house and carved with Mr. Mapes's best game set. Mrs. Bennett's cook would make a pie, yes, even a difficult lemon pie with a meringue on top, promised Mrs. Bennett.

Then there were to be butter beans out of the cottage garden, and sliced cucumbers from the green-grocer's because Mrs. Crane had confessed to a fondness for cucumbers. There was one beet in the garden almost large enough to be eaten; that, too, was to be sacrificed. The dessert had been something of a problem. It had proved so hard to decide this matter that they concluded to compromise by adding: both pudding and ice