Each spoon was polished with the greatest particularity before it was laid on the tray; each knife passed under inspection.

Visitors were not an every-day luxury in the High Valley, and too much care could not be taken for their entertainment, it seemed.
Supper was brought in by a Chinese cook in a pigtail, wooden shoes, and a blue Mother Hubbard, Choo Loo by name.

He was evidently a good cook, for the corn-bread and fresh mountain trout and the ham and eggs were savory to the last degree, and the flapjacks, with which the meal concluded, and which were eaten with a sauce of melted raspberry jelly, deserved even higher encomium.
"We are willing to be treated as company this first night," observed Mrs.
Hope; "but if you are going to keep us a week, you must let us make ourselves useful, and set the table and arrange the rooms for you." "We will begin to-morrow morning," added Clover.

"May we, Clarence?
May we play that it is our house, and do what we like, and change about and arrange things?
It will be such fun." "Fire away!" said her cousin, calmly.

"The more you change the more we shall like it.