At the Little Brown House Part 28

"Get your bank and settle your account, Hector."

And once more the boy was forced to obey.

"There!" breathed Peace, closing her fingers over the added coins. "I guess we are square now. I just happened to think of the cake. Isn't it lucky I did? I wasn't quite sure he took it, but seeing that my tramp didn't do it, I knew it must be someone in town, and I couldn't think of anyone else mean enough. Good-bye!"

She ran lightly down the steps and away toward home, chanting to herself, "He had to pay up, he had to pay up!" Suddenly she halted by the roadside and listened. "Yes, sir! That's Hec a-howling! I guess the Judge got hold of that strap again. Well, he deserves a good licking, but I'm glad I'm not there to see him dance."

CHAPTER XVI

THE STATE FAIR CAKE

"What are you doing with all that torn-up paper, Peace?" asked Allee, finding her sister busy stripping old papers into tiny shreds up in the barn loft, after she had searched all over the place for her.

"I want to make a map like Hope's cla.s.s had to," answered Peace, pouring an ap.r.o.nful of sc.r.a.ps into a bucket of scalding water. "I asked her how she did it, and she said they drew the maps first, and then mixed up a lot of blotters in boiling water. I hunted all over the place for blotters, and couldn't find but four, so I'm trying these newspapers.

They make an awful looking mess, but I guess they will work. You can tear paper if you want to."

Allee took the hint, and accepting the magazine Peace offered her, she fell to pulling it to pieces, adding her mite to the mixture in the pail. "How many must you have?" she ventured to ask, after an hour at this monotonous occupation.

"I guess this will be enough," answered the older girl, critically examining the nasty mess, and stirring it so energetically that a goodly portion of it flew out of the bucket into her lap.

"Have you drawn a map?" Allee inquired, looking around the dingy loft in quest of such an article.

"No--o, I can't seem to get a good one. The first time I tried, it looked like an elephant with two trunks, and the second time the Mississippi River came out of the middle of Florida. In this last picture, the land is so fat there isn't any room for the ocean. But I found two old g'ographies in that heap of trash, and Gail said I could have them. So I've pulled out all the maps of the United States that I could find, and now I'm ready to cut them out. Then we'll paste them onto that board and stick the paper _mush_ on top."

"Why do you want so many all alike?" asked the inquisitive little sister, watching the shining scissors snip in and out around capes and peninsulas with painstaking care. "I should think you would make a c'lection of different maps like Hope has in her book."

Peace paused to consider the suggestion, and then answered, "Well, that's something I hadn't thought about. It would be better to have them all different, wouldn't it? I'll just hunt up some others that aren't alike. _This_ United States one is too small, then; but maybe we can use it for something else. I'll finish cutting it out anyway, though we'll want the biggest we can get for our paper _mush_."

She finished snipping it out as carefully as she could in view of the many ragged coasts of our country, and laid it aside, while she chose another larger one to be honored with the "_paper mush_" covering. It took a long time to complete all the maps selected--Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australia--but at last they were finished; and Allee, the patient, joined in the sigh of satisfaction which escaped Peace's lips as she dropped the scissors from her cramped, tired hands.

"Now we'll stick on the _mush_. Hold this map, Allee, so's it won't wiggle." She daubed on a great handful of the dirty gray pulp and tried to smooth it over the colored map surface, but evidently the paper had not soaked long enough, for it still held its own shape, and refused utterly to form the paste Peace had watched Hope handle with such ease and success.

"It doesn't stay very well, does it?" remarked Allee.

"No, it doesn't!" snapped Peace in exasperation. "I shall not bother with it any more. I'm tired of fooling with it when it acts like that.

I'll throw it out and play with my corncob doll this morning."

"Are you going to throw away all these nice maps that you have cut out, too?" asked Allee, as the angry girl flung down the wet newspaper sc.r.a.ps and started for the house.

Peace paused, surveyed the gorgeously colored heap which she had spent so long a time in preparing, and answered, "Well, I'll keep them awhile, for maybe some day we may want them again." Gathering them up, she descended the ladder and marched off toward the kitchen, thoroughly out of patience with the whole world and with herself in particular.

Through the open windows and door came savory smells of something cooking, and she quickened her steps, sniffing the air and saying, "Faith has been baking; maybe there are some dishes to lick. I wonder if she made any frosting. Mrs. Lacy always wants caramel, and I just love that."

"Faith's cross like you are," warned Allee, following in her sister's steps, nevertheless.

"Cakes always make her cross," answered Peace, ignoring her share of the compliment. "Gail says it makes her nervous thinking p'r'aps the oven will be too hot or too cool, or the dough not just right, or something.

But Faith hardly ever gets so cross that she won't let us clean out the pans."

They entered the room in search of the cooking dishes it was so often their privilege to sc.r.a.pe, but the warm kitchen was in spick and span order, with nothing of the kind in sight; and Allee suggested hopefully, "Maybe they are in the pantry."

"And maybe Faith is, too," whispered Peace, cautiously opening the door and peeping within. "No, she ain't, but she has made four big cakes.

My! Don't they look fine? One choc'late loaf, two caramel layers, and one white square one. Looks like a graveyard with them all set even in a row, doesn't it? There ought to be three frosting pans to lick."

"I don't see a single any," remarked Allee, poking into every nook and cranny in hope of finding their treat. "I guess she licked them all herself."

"That's too mean of her," cried Peace, joining in the hunt with no better success. "She could have saved those dishes for us as well as not. What have you found?"

Allee at that moment had unearthed two mysterious little packages, and in trying to investigate one of them, she dropped it, and the bag's contents were scattered all over the floor.

"Candies!" gasped Peace. "Sh! Don't cry! I'll help you pick them up.

They must be for Minnie Eastman's birthday cake. I s'pose that is the white frosted one. The candies aren't hurt a mite, Allee. Stop snivelling. Let's see what is in that other sack. Sugar, green sugar!

Looks poison, doesn't it? But it tastes all right. Oh, see what I've done! My little United States map fell right on top of the white cake."

"It fits, too," gulped tearful Allee. "Looks as if it b'longed there."

"It's going to b'long!" cried Peace with sudden decision. "I shall trace around it with this pointed knife and then fix it up like Hope does her _paper mush_ maps. See, the frosting is soft enough to work easy."

"You better not," Allen protested. "Faith might not like it."

"Faith's tickled to death when she can find some new way of dec'rating her cakes, and as this is Minnie's birthday cake she'll be awfully pleased, 'cause she got the highest mark in geography of anyone in their room, Hope says."

As she talked, she wielded the sharp knife with surprisingly good results in tracing the ragged outlines of the map in the soft icing, and even critical Allee was charmed when the paper was lifted, disclosing the knife marks. "You have to put all those blue lines in, too, don't you?" she asked. "How can you do that?"

Peace pondered. "Those are rivers and these brown smudges are mountains.

I asked Hope once. They all ought to go in, but I'm afraid I can't draw straight enough. Oh, I know what I'll do. Mrs. Strong uses pin-p.r.i.c.ked patterns for stamping Glen's dresses. I'll try that." Carefully, laboriously, she p.r.i.c.ked in the rivers, mountains and state boundaries, mistaking the latter for railroads; and then drew back to survey her work.

"The pin marks don't show much, do they?" ventured Allee.

"No, but I shan't leave them there anyway--not alone. We'll cover the railroads with these colored candies, and the rivers we'll make of green sugar. They are blue on the map, but green and blue ain't much different, anyway. We'll jam down the ocean and cover that with green, too. These curly choc'late candies will make good mountains, and by heaping up the frosting we dug out of the ocean we'll have islands and lighthouses. Now, ain't that elegant?"

"Oh, my precious State Fair cake!" cried a dismayed voice behind them, and before either guilty decorator could face the angry sister, they were seized firmly by the shoulders, jerked through the doorway, vigorously shaken, each dealt a smart blow across their ears, and left dazed and tearful in the middle of the kitchen, while the avenger rushed sobbing upstairs.

Neither culprit had recovered her breath when Gail was upon them, not the gentle sister they were accustomed to seeing, but a stern, indignant, justice-dealing judge.

"Peace Greenfield," she said severely, "what have you done? Ruined the cake Faith has taken such pains with for the Fair!"

"I--I thought it was Minnie's birthday cake. I--I just dec'rated it."

"Just decorated it! What for? What business had you to touch it? That was pure mischief and nothing else. She intended making a spray of roses and green leaves on that cake and now you've spoiled it. Go sit down in your little chairs and stay there until noon. For fear you will forget about staying there, I shall tie you in."

"Oh, Gail, as if we were little kids!"

"That is what you are when you meddle with things that don't belong to you. I have talked until I am tired. You don't pay a bit of attention, so I must punish you some other way. Next time I shall send you to bed.

Perhaps I better do that today."