Household Puzzles

MP3 Audio CD. CHAPTER I.



"SPLIT THINGS."



ERMINA RANDOLPH drummed listlessly yet gloomily on the window pane ; she was watching the snow as it came down in wandering flakes. " Spitting snow," Maria called it. Maria was in the kitchen, making cookies. They mostly used cookies in the Randolph family, in preference to other kinds of cake ; not that they preferred them either, but they wore better. You could " split them thinner," Maria said, and " work in plenty of flour, and flour cost less than butter and eggs." This was the genius of the Randolph family at least it was the necessity to "split things thin," and " wear " them as long as pos sible. Helen came in from the white world outside, bringing flakes of snow on her cloak and sodden lumps of it on her rubbers.

" One rubber leaks," was her announcement ; " one foot is as wet as water. I do wish I had a new pair."

"Of feet?" queried Ermina, turning from the outside snow. " Now, I should like a new pair of almost anything conceivable, except feet; I am very well satisfied with the ones I have."

A glance at her trim, well-shapen foot would not have led you to feel surprise at this conclu sion.

" Why don't you have a better fire ? " was Helen's only answer to this sentence.

"Coal is dear," Ermina said, with a shrug of her shapely shoulders.

"What isn't?" Helen answered, and there was a little spice of tartness in her voice ; " I'm not going to freeze to death to accommodate the price of coal."

Then she put forth her wet foot and slipped back the under slide with decision; the dingy leaden mass of coal instantly glowed nt the change and the air seemed to feel warmer.