"Oh, Gail," sobbed miserable Peace, "I didn"t mean to be bad, truly! I thought Faith would like some new way to dec"rate her cakes. I--please don"t send us to bed! I"m awful sorry! Allee isn"t to blame! She tried to make me leave it alone, didn"t you, Babe?"
"Yes," hiccoughed the equally penitent, but loyal young sinner, "and then I helped dig up the rivers and pile on the mountains!"
Gail"s face relaxed a little; a great tenderness for these little orphan sisters swept through her heart, and she felt herself relenting. Then Faith"s tragic despair rose before her inner vision again, and she hardened her heart, drew out some stout cord from the cupboard drawer, and tied the humiliated duet into their rickety, worn-out old rockers, leaving them to their unhappy thoughts while she went back to her work upstairs.
For a long time, it seemed to them, they sat jogging back and forth in the warm kitchen, mournfully dabbing their eyes and sniffing tearfully.
Then Peace sat up, drew a deep, quivering breath, and said decisively, "I"m going to take that cake over to Mrs. Grinnell"s--"
"Gail said we had to stay here until noon," quavered Allee.
"She said we had to sit in these _chairs_ till then," Peace corrected.
"Well, that"s the same thing. How can you go over to Mrs. Grinnell"s and stay in your chair?"
"Easy enough. I"ll take it along. Gail didn"t tie our hands."
Allee gasped. "But you can"t carry the cake, too!"
"I"ll put the cake in the big egg basket and you"ll take hold on one handle and I the other. That will leave us each a free hand to hold onto our chairs with."
"Oh!"
"Will you do it?"
"Course."
With some difficulty they rose to their feet, made their way into the pantry once more and found the market basket; but it was another task to get the heavy cake into it, and they were almost in despair, when Peace"s fertile mind found a solution to the problem.
"It"s "cause my chair keeps slipping that I can"t do it," she said, after several vain attempts to lift the cake. "I have only one hand to pick this heavy thing up with. Stick this piece of string through the back of my chair, Allee, and I"ll tie it to the arms in front. There, that makes straps and holds the chair better. It cuts into your shoulders, though, doesn"t it? Never mind, it won"t be so bad when we get started and can hold onto the chairs. Are you ready? Don"t make any noise, for Gail mustn"t hear us."
Slowly, cautiously, they tiptoed across the kitchen floor, let themselves out, and with wildly beating hearts hurried, as fast as the b.u.mping chairs tied to their backs would permit, toward the tiny red cottage where Mrs. Grinnell lived all alone. Owing to their burdens, they made slow progress, and both conspirators expected any moment to hear Gail in pursuit. But it chanced that the busy housekeeper was too much occupied in the front chambers to discover their absence, and they reached the red house all out of breath, but without a mishap.
"For the land sakes!" cried the plump, motherly woman, upsetting a pan of apples in her surprise. "What are you young ones playing now?"
"This isn"t exactly a play," Peace answered. "We"ve spoiled Faith"s State Fair cake and now she ain"t going to send it. I thought maybe you could tell us some way to fix it up." She set down the basket, lifted the paper covering and disclosed the queer, geographical decorations to the woman"s astonished gaze.
"Well, now, if that ain"t the cutest!" exclaimed the worthy lady in genuine admiration. "Who"d ever have thought of putting the United States on a cake top but you, Peace Greenfield!"
"I never _thought_ of it," answered the child honestly. "The map fell there, it fitted and I scratched it in. Now it is spoiled for the Fair and Faith is bawling her eyes out."
Mrs. Grinnell looked keenly at the two sober, tear-stained faces before her, guessed the rest of the story, and rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
Then she laughed in childish delight. "Why, I"ve got the finest scheme, you ducklings! We will just do a little juggling, and I think Faith will stand a better chance for the blue ribbon than she would with this white cake."
"What do you mean?" faltered puzzled Peace.
"Just this: I ordered a caramel layer of Faith for a little supper some of my people in the city are intending to give a niece of mine and her beau. They are to be married next week. She is a school teacher, and this cake will tickle her immensely. I"ll just trot this in for the supper, and we"ll take the caramel layer to the Fair. According to my notion of thinking, Faith"s caramel cakes beat her others all hollow."
"But--but--the caramel cakes haven"t any red candy roses and green leaves on them," stammered Peace.
"They don"t need them," said Mrs. Grinnell, scornfully. "Goodness knows they are pretty enough plain, and as for taste--they are the finest I ever ate, and I used to be a pretty good cake-maker myself when the children were at home and my husband living. Now, not a word to Faith about this. Don"t even tell Gail unless you have to. You better scamper for home now before you are missed."
So they shambled back to the close kitchen, with the chairs still b.u.mping and rubbing at every step, and were safely settled in their corner once more before Gail had finished her Sat.u.r.day sweeping and dusting above. When she came downstairs to prepare their simple lunch and found the geographical cake missing from the pantry shelf, she thought Faith had disposed of it in some way, and consequently asked no questions, but released the sorry little sinners from their chairs, gave them their dinner and sent them off to play.
When red-eyed Faith put in appearance late that afternoon, ready to deliver the other three cakes to her customers, she looked stealthily about for the ruined white mound, and not finding it, decided that Gail had hid it until her heavy disappointment should have eased somewhat; and she, too, asked no questions.
At first she refused to accompany the sisters on their visit to the fairgrounds, but Peace"s bitter misery softened her heart, and she went, though still too sorely grieved to enjoy much of the gay scenes and beautiful exhibits. However, all day long she studiously avoided the building where the cooked food was on exhibition, though Peace was wild to investigate its mysteries, and even Gail tried to persuade her to enter. Late in the afternoon, just as the oldest sister was proposing that they start for home, Cherry caught sight of a familiar figure entering the Horticultural Building, and raced after her with a yell of recognition, "Mrs. Grinnell, Mrs. Grinnell, we are all here!"
"Well, well," exclaimed the woman, smiling into the flushed face at her elbow, "this is great luck. Come, all of you! I have found something I want you to see. You, most of all, Faith."
She led them down one street and up another, into a white doorway before any of them had a chance to discover the name of the building, through a maze of aisles and a surging throng of weary sightseers, and paused in the cake department, pointed toward a blue-ribbon cake in one case, and said triumphantly, "Peace"s geography cake was the hit of the evening last Sat.u.r.day, but it took the caramel layer to win the prize, Faith!"
CHAPTER XVII
THE CIRCUS AND THE MISSIONARY
"Oh, look, Allee! See the elephants and lions and giraffes and zebras on that poster. It"s the cirkis as sure as I"m alive! Do you know I"ve always wanted to see the cirkis, and this is the first time I ever knew one to stop at Parker."
"How do you know it will stop here?" asked skeptical Allee, who was just beginning to read, and found the long words on the billboard too much for her to master.
""Cause it says so. Parker, the eighteenth, Allee. Just think, that"s only next Sat.u.r.day! Just a week from today! Isn"t it lucky it"s on Sat.u.r.day? Do you s"pose we can go?"
"I "xpect it will take money for that just like it does for everything else," answered the blue-eyed baby with a comically philosophical air; "and you know Gail never has any for such things as that."
"Well, this is cheaper than most things, "cause it says "a-dults twenty-five cents, and children fifteen cents." The Fair cost half a dollar for a-dults and twenty-five cents for children. If there is a chance to go to anything cheap, we better try hard to go, Allee, for that doesn"t happen often."
"Maybe Gail might not like to have us go even if we could get the money."
"She does have some queer notions about places, doesn"t she? At first she didn"t want us to see that moving picture show at the church, but when Brother Strong went and took us, she thought it was all right.
We"ll ask about the cirkis before we tell her that it"s coming, and maybe we can find out that way whether she would let us go."
"I don"t think we would have to ask much, "cause she thinks cirkises are bad, and I don"t b"lieve she would like to have us there."
"What makes you so sure? I never have heard her say a thing about them."
"She told Hope so the time Hope wanted to see "_Julio and Romiet_" when they studied it in school."
"That wasn"t a cirkis, that was a theatre, Allee. That"s different. It takes painted people to play out the words in the theatre, but at the cirkis only real animals act, and do tricks that take brains to learn.
Why, this picture shows a nelephant beating a drum. Now, elephants live in the _jumbles_ of Africa, Hope says, and they don"t have drums to beat there. Hunters go to their houses and catch them and teach them how to drum, "cause they have brains enough to learn. Look at that lion with its mouth open and that woman with her head chucked clear inside. She must like to be licked better"n I do. It makes me shiver when Towzer sticks his big, hot tongue on my face. Ugh! S"posing the lion should shut his mouth and bite her head off, what do you guess she"d do?"
"I guess they"d have to get another woman for the lion," answered Allee.
"I don"t b"lieve those animals really do those things, do you, Peace?"
"Yes, I do. Why, that book of natural history that Hector lent us after he got licked for stealing the melons tells about the way hunters train them to act in cirkises. I"d like to see them awfully much myself."