What else may we have for the school luncheon? What is the difference between luncheon and other meals?

The Pleasant Valley Luncheon Club found it necessary to have a small committee each week to make plans for the luncheons for the coming week, in order that the pupils might know what each one should bring. The committees did not have disagreeable disputes, although they did not always quite agree. The club soon learned that not all the members could have the food they liked best at every luncheon, and that it was not good sense to be what John Alden called "too fussy."

One day, when John Stark asked for plum pudding, and his sister, Mollie Stark, told him that he could not have it because plum pudding is not a luncheon dish, he said, "Why not? What is luncheon? Some of us call it dinner, anyway." And what is luncheon, or breakfast, or dinner; and what is a meal? These questions seemed to be conundrums, although the girls and boys had eaten meals all their lives. So they looked up the words in the new, big dictionary. They became so much interested that they wanted to learn the words for meals in other languages, and they found that different nations have very different habits in regard to their food.

In our own country, we usually have three meals, - breakfast, dinner, and supper, or tea, - or breakfast, luncheon, and dinner.

What is a meal? One dictionary says that a meal is "the supply of food taken at one time for the relief of hunger," and tells us that in the very old days of England, the Anglo-Saxon days, the word was spelled "mael," meaning a fixed time. That is very interesting; for not only is it important to the person preparing the meal to have people prompt, but it is very necessary to us all to eat at regular hours, - babies, little children, and grown people, too.