The fun of cooking

**Don't you think we might have two or three different kinds of things,"** she suggested doubtfully. **Some of them, for the boys, might be pretty bad ; and some others for the girls a lot better. I don't want to dream of ghosts!" Miss Betty was willing to do this, but Jack objected. "Be a sport, Mildred!" he said. "Remember it's Hallowe'en." **Well, we'll see," she said at last. "Perhaps I'll eat a few dreadful things just to see what will happen. Now what can we have? I can't use a chafing dish at all." "Jack can," Miss Betty said, laughing. Jack's cooking never ceased to be a joke. "If I never cooked in one in my life, except cheese dreams, at the Dwights'," Jack assured her. **A chafing dish and a frying-pan are just the same sort of thing, and you know you learned all about frying-pans in the summer, so now, of course, you must show what you can do. I'll give you the receipts and tell you just how to make the things, but you must use a chafing-dish; if you won't — then, of course, I won't be able to help with the party at all." So Jack reluctantly promised to do his part. "Probably I'll spoil things and make a mess," he grumbled. But Miss Betty refused to let him off. "Of course you can cook in a chafing dish," she assured him. "All men can, especially those who can do camp cooking, and you know you're an expert there. Jack! Now let's see what we can have." "Do let's have oysters for one thing; they are just in season now," begged Mildred. [illustration: A HALLOWE'EN SUPPER 171] "Of course — they are just the thing; suppose we have pigs in blankets, and Jack shall make them, for they are easy and oh, so good! And, Mildred, you shall have a chafing dish, too, and make something else; and we can make things to go with them, so there will be plenty of supper for everybody. How many are you going to have?" "Oh, we haven't thought about it yet, and we must talk it over with Mother and see what she thinks; but I know she will love the party, because she always does." And so, sure enough, their mother did love the plan. A chafing-dish supper was such a bright idea, she said, and so like Miss Betty. They decided to ask only eight guests, four boys and four girls. In case the food did not turn out to be what they hoped, it was better not to have too many to eat it. Jack thought. Hallowe'en obligingly came on a Saturday, just as though it knew how convenient that day would be for everybody. Mildred and Brownie and Miss Betty and Mother Blair and Norah all helped in getting things ready, laying the table, filling the alcohol lamps of the two chafingdishes, — one borrowed from Miss Betty, — and preparing the good things for the supper. They to D decided to have first, the dish of oysters made by Jack at one end of the table, and some eggs to go with them, made by Mildred at the other. With these were to be some potatoes — a new kind Mildred had never heard of — and Brownie thought she could make these and send them in nice and hot ; she was going to make cocoa, too, to go with the other hot dishes, and she and Mildred together were going to make sandwiches in the afternoon. And after these. Miss Betty said, there was to be something perfectly wonderful — something so good and so new. "Oh, what?" they all begged. Miss Betty's eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and she shook her pretty head. "Wait and see," she said solemnly. "I'll bring in the things this afternoon and we will all make it together." And they had to be content with this promise.