When Molly had said Marta was to make croquettes for breakfast, she had forgotten that she had kidneys in the house; but, remembering it before she went to bed, she told Marta she would come down and broil them herself, which she accordingly did, knowing kidneys are very easily spoiled by bad cooking.
She split each kidney down the back, or thick side, but did not sever the core or membrane, so that when opened they lay flat, but still in one. Then she ran a long skewer through the centre bit of fat and brought it out again, in such a manner that the kidney lay open flat under the skewer, which was attached to it only by that stitch through the middle; then a second kidney was run on in the same way till they were all threaded, the skewer lying across them all; but nowhere did it pierce the flesh of the kidney. This arrangement prevents the kidneys’ curling up in unsightly fashion and secures their being equally cooked.
They were laid on a hot gridiron, and a dish and plates made very hot to receive and serve them on; and while Molly cooked them, Marta carried in breakfast, for kidneys are things that are spoiled by waiting.
She turned them often for about four minutes. During the process she had put in the little dish that was to receive them a piece of butter the size of a butternut, a level salt-spoonful of salt, a little pepper, and a tea-spoonful of Worcestershire sauce. When the kidneys were done they were removed from the skewer, and each well rolled in the hot butter and seasoning. They were just enough cooked in that four minutes for the gravy to start when the fork pricked them; if over-cooked they become tough.
“Kidneys!” cried Harry, as Molly removed the heated vegetable-dish-cover she had used to send them unchilled to table. “Dear Molly, where do you scare up these metropolitan dainties in the wilds of Jersey?”
“Nothing so easy; actually, the butcher throws them in with his tallow, and seemed surprised that I wanted them.”
“I’m afraid such ignorance can’t last,” said Harry “and when he finds lamb’s kidneys are really very desirable, he will value them accordingly.”
“No, not until he has customers who do; and I suspect, although the man I buy from sells good meat, that he is not the fashionable butcher of Greenfield.”
“They are cooked to a turn, Molly.”
“I am glad. I should have had them on toast in the orthodox way, but knew you preferred fresh bread.”
In the afternoon Mrs. Lennox came with her work-basket to sew, while she paid Molly a visit.
“I want to have a little talk with you, but can only spare the time if I bring some darning with me, so you will excuse me.”
“I am glad, for I also have my sewing,” she said, and she colored a little as she displayed a dainty little garment.
“I am so glad,” said Mrs. Lennox; and there was congratulation in the tone, although she said no more. “You have done me so much good since I have known you, Mrs. Bishop, that I feel I may trouble you a little further about my affairs without exhausting your patience.”
“You certainly may, if I can do anything.”
“I must seem a perfect ignoramus to you, and yet I’m an old married woman and you’re a young one; but the fact is, I was married directly after I left school. I knew nothing of housekeeping, for my mother had been such an invalid that we always boarded at that time. Mr. Lennox was full of hope that he would rise to great things,—all young writers are,—but, unluckily, the hard times of ’73 came, and the magazine of which he was sub-editor, and which he hoped to edit, succumbed, and ever since then he has been forced to plod on, at what insures us bread. He has never dared to try for better things, and I know he frets at seeing me so overworked, and has been telling me for years if I would sew less, and cook more, I should be better; but first one must ‘know how’ to cook, and I don’t. There is one thing, however, I do see now, that I never did before; and that is, that if I give my time to preparing the food, I can save enough to get the sewing I cannot do done for me. I never realized this before, but now I do. This is Friday, and we have lived nicely—I mean we have had food we enjoyed, and I have spent $2 less; and the sewing I should have done in the time I have cooked would not have amounted to one full day’s work, which I can get done for a dollar.”
“I am glad you see it so. I was sure of it, and I am sure that the effort to do so much sewing and the housework, too, is far more wearing than double the quantity of either alone would be.”
“Yes, because I dread to lose a minute, and the cooking always seemed such a loss.”
“I wonder you have not thought it cheaper to keep a servant.”
Mrs. Lennox dropped her work in her lap, and looked at Molly in astonishment.
“Cheaper! why, I should feel I was ruined at once.”
“Let us talk it over a bit, and see if my idea is right or yours. You pay a woman to wash?”
“Yes, I spend $8 a month in getting help, a dollar a week for washing, and the other dollar I divide between the heavy ironing and roughest cleaning; the rest I do myself.”
“And the ironing that is left is quite a day’s work?”
“Well, it takes all my spare time on Tuesday; and I have been running down so much lately, that I am afraid I cannot do it through next summer.”
Molly looked at her. She did, indeed, look as if she were worn out. She could understand that doing all the work for her family, washing, even, included, was nothing extraordinary for some women; but for this one, with her ambition to dress her children prettily, not to look poor as well as be poor, her fastidious husband, and her bringing-up,—it was an effort that was wearing her out.
“Now this is the way I reckon,” said Molly. “You can get a strong, newly landed girl, for six or eight dollars a month. She may have nothing but health and industry, although I have known girls as capable as those who ask more, but more self-distrustful. Will not such a girl do more to help you for $8 the month than you get now for that money?”
“Oh dear, yes. It seems to me if I had only some one to wash dishes every day I should be easy; but you forget the food.”
“No, I do not; but, really, if you have time to give your own attention to that, and you would have then, your food would cost less, even with one extra to feed than now. It would not be so if you had to get an extra large steak or chops each day for that one, but with the varied cooking you could then practice, you would find it make only such difference as you can easily make up in some other way; for instance, you use baker’s bread; make it at home, and the difference in cost will be more than your girl will eat of it; then, as all children like rye bread, use it once or twice a week. You will make your expensive flour go much farther. Then if rye is not liked, or they get tired, use one week Indian and wheat bread, another, rice bread. I don’t think your husband or children would consider these breads anything but a treat, or know they came cheaper, and I should say nothing on that point till you found out their real tastes. One thing I don’t want to advise; and that is, the providing of any unpalatable or unwelcome food, be it ever so wholesome or cheap. Food eaten without relish is not wholesome; and that is why, unless time is given to cooking, the coarser parts of meat are not economical, because they require careful cooking. A hurried, slap-dash way of preparing any part of meat spoils it. Only the finest steaks or chops are eatable, when so abused; but it requires all their excellence to make them so.”
“I am taking in all you say. You have startled me wonderfully about the girl; and the way you put it makes it seem as if it would be almost cheaper.”
“It would be as cheap, and your health would be better. You may not be lucky enough to meet with a good girl at first; but we all run that risk, and I am sure of one thing: if you should give double the wages you would be equally exposed to it, and I am in favor of taking girls who have nothing to unlearn. I went on that plan with my Marta; and, although she is not all I could wish, I don’t think I should have done better by taking one who professed to know.”
“I don’t think you could; but she seems to me an exceptional girl.”
“Fortunately for me, she has a fondness for cooking, and seems thoroughly respectable; but, if I had more work in my house, I should not be able to keep her; so I am hoping you may be able to find one equally good and a little quicker, if you resolve to make the trial.”
“I would like, but I am afraid. I have always heard that a servant increases the expenses out of all proportion to what she eats.”
“Of course, if servants are left to themselves in their inexperience, they waste far more than they consume; but you will oversee everything.”
“And then I shall get the reputation of being dreadfully stingy.”
“What matter? You might be wasteful, and still be called so by those who wish to do it; but economy is not stint. I am sure you will never look more keenly after odds and ends than I do.”
Mrs. Lennox looked incredulous.
“It is true. If there is one potato left I have it put away; one spoonful of rice, a fag end of beefsteak. Although I am new to keeping house in this country, I am an old housekeeper; for my mother left everything to me, and, our means being small, and she fastidious (by which I mean only that she could do without anything, better than have it second rate), I had to set my wits to work; and I’ve too often known the time when one potato was just the thing to finish, or make her a little dish, to despise it.”
“But how?”
Molly laughed. “Impossible to say, for one never knows what may happen; but I can tell you what it once did. My mother and I lived alone, and so rarely had joints of meat that we seldom had much more than enough in the house for our needs, in the way of fresh meats, but potted dainties we always had. However, one wet, chilly evening, a visitor arrived unexpectedly, an American traveling, and he had come considerably out of his way to see us for a half an hour. I was at my wits’ end, for our solitary maid had her holiday, and we were about to sit down to a cozy cup of tea and toast, with some anchovy paste and a little fruit. All we had in the house was a few slices of corned beef, not presentable, for they had been cut off for tea the night before. Now I knew our friend expected no dinner; and to give him as good a one as a French cook could send up would be no treat, for he was leading a hotel life. The only thing he would really enjoy would be some real American dish. There was little time, for he had to catch a train in an hour. I flew down-stairs in despair. I must have something hot to set before him. I looked at the safe; there were about a cup of cold mush, a solitary potato of good size, and a few half-dried scraps of corned beef. I took them all into the kitchen, blessing the French charcoal stoves, which are always ready, and, arranging the oven for baking, I chopped my beef, then the potato, not too fine. When done there were a cup of beef and rather less of potato. I put some beef-dripping into a pan, and set it to get hot; and into a saucepan put the beef and potato mixed, and a little salt and pepper, and stirred them round; and then I added a small half cup of thick cream. While this was heating, I cut the mush in slices, floured each, and when the dripping was smoking hot I laid them in; I tasted the hash, and found it just right. There was no time to brown it; but I left it long enough for the cream to dry sufficiently away, while I beat the yolks of four eggs and the whites to a stiff froth, then added to the yolks a little salt and three table-spoonfuls of milk, stirred the whites to them gently, and then took up the hash. The mush, which I had turned, was now pale brown; and I laid it round the dish on which was the hash, then poured the fat from the saucepan, put a bit of butter in it, and when it melted, which, as the pan was already very hot, it did in a moment, I poured in the eggs. Happily, the table was ready, and my mother always made tea on it; so I waited only to split a few pickled gherkins to garnish the hash, and then my omelet being half set I put it, pan and all, in the oven, while I carried my Yankee dish to table. I had been absent only twenty minutes; everything was ready, and, while the traveller’s tea was being poured out, I ran down and doubled my omelet over and turned it out. I am quite sure nothing short of canvas-back ducks, or New England turkey and cranberry sauce, could have been such a success as that hash.”
“‘Dear Mrs. Holmes,’ our friend said to my mother, ‘I assure you I have dreamed of corned-beef hash and fried mush, and longed for them many times when the table has been groaning with every French dainty, and believed I could not hope to eat them on this side of the Atlantic.’
“Since that time I never think anything too small to save; it comes in when least expected; and, had my cooked potato not been there, I could have made no hash.”