Great-aunt Eliza's Visit

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"I had just a splendid time at your place, and I envy your Aunt Eliza her nephews and nieces. You were all so nice to me, and I didn't dare to be a bit nice to you lest I should give myself away. But I'll make up for that when you come to see me at Government House, as you all must the very next time you come to town. I'm so sorry I didn't see Paddy, for I love pussy cats, even if they do track molasses over my clothes. And, Cecily, thank you ever so much for that little bag of pot-pourri. It smells like a hundred rose gardens, and I have put it between the sheets for my very sparest room bed, where you shall sleep when you come to see me, you dear thing. And the Governor wants you to put his name on the quilt square, too, in the ten-cent section.

"Tell Dan I enjoyed his comments on the photographs very much. They were quite a refreshing contrast to the usual explanations of 'who's who.' And Felicity, your rusks were perfection. Do send me your recipe for them, there's a darling.

"Yours most cordially,

AGNES CLARK LESLEY.

"Well, it was decent of her to apologize, anyhow," commented Dan.

"If we only hadn't said that about the Governor," moaned Felicity.

"How did you make your rusks?" asked Aunt Janet. "There was no baking-powder in the house, and I never could get them right with soda and cream of tartar."

"There was plenty of baking-powder in the pantry," said Felicity.

"No, there wasn't a particle. I used the last making those cookies Thursday morning."

"But I found another can nearly full, away back on the top shelf, ma,--the one with the yellow label. I guess you forgot it was there."

Aunt Janet stared at her pretty daughter blankly. Then amazement gave place to horror.

"Felicity King!" she exclaimed. "You don't mean to tell me that you raised those rusks with the stuff that was in that old yellow can?"

"Yes, I did," faltered Felicity, beginning to look scared. "Why, ma, what was the matter with it?"

"Matter! That stuff was TOOTH-POWDER, that's what it was. Your Cousin Myra broke the bottle her tooth-powder was in when she was here last winter and I gave her that old can to keep it in. She forgot to take it when she went away and I put it on that top shelf. I declare you must all have been bewitched yesterday."

Poor, poor Felicity! If she had not always been so horribly vain over her cooking and so scornfully contemptuous of other people's aspirations and mistakes along that line, I could have found it in my heart to pity her.

The Story Girl would have been more than human if she had not betrayed a little triumphant amusement, but Peter stood up for his lady manfully.

"The rusks were splendid, anyhow, so what difference does it make what they were raised with?"

Dan, however, began to taunt Felicity with her tooth-powder rusks, and kept it up for the rest of his natural life.

"Don't forget to send the Governor's wife the recipe for them," he said.

Felicity, with eyes tearful and cheeks crimson from mortification, rushed from the room, but never, never did the Governor's wife get the recipe for those rusks.