need.

We were tired of sewing and writing and reading in three hours; it
was only restful change to come down and put the chickens into the
oven, and set the dinner-table.

Then, in the broken hour while they were cooking, we drifted out upon
the piazza, and among our plants in the shady east corner by the
parlor windows, and Ruth played a little, and mother took up the
Atlantic, and we felt we had a good right to the between-times when
the fresh dredgings of flour were getting their brown, and after that,
while the potatoes were boiling.

Barbara gave us currant-jelly; she was a stingy Barbara about that
jelly, and counted her jars; and when father and Stephen came in,
there was the little dinner of three covers, and a peach-pie of
Saturday's making on the side-board, and the green screen up before
the stove again, and the baking-pan safe in the pantry sink, with hot
water and ammonia in it.

"Mother," said Barbara, "I feel as if we had got rid of a menagerie!"

"It is the girl that makes the kitchen," said Ruth.

"And then the kitchen that has to have the girl," said Mrs. Holabird.

Ruth got up and took away the dishes, and went round with the
crumb-knife, and did not forget to fill the tumblers, nor to put on
father's cheese.