  The days were slipping by, and Nancy found herself entangled in a rather confused vacation. True, she had already reaped real benefit from the big sale and from the subsequent days’ sales in her shop, but was it really being a vacation? It must be admitted that Nancy had a tendency to stubbornness, but since that peculiarity very often marks the first stages of a strong character, her mother wisely allowed her to continue to try things out for herself. The Whatnot Shop was not proving in any way a disappointment, but it was most certainly giving Nancy work, so that she was not free to come and go with the other girls, in spite of Miss Manners frequent and generous offers to “'tend store” for her. A bright spot on her calendar not very far off, was the coming of Mrs. Brandon’s vacation. Soon she would be at home, free to do all the precious things a devoted mother plans to do in the little interval of freedom so long looked forward to and so quickly spent. “When you are home,” Nancy would continually plan, “I’m going to do that,” referring to any one of a number of things being postponed. Today it was raining; a sudden summer shower was drenching everything as if rain had never had such a good time before, and a charity sale, in which all the girls were interested, was to be held that afternoon. Everyone, including Nancy, expected to attend, and she with others had promised to donate a cake. But how it rained! And Nancy had planned to go into town to the fancy bakers to get her cake. Hour after hour she hoped the rain would cease, until it became too late for a telephone delivery, and still Nancy could not go out in the downpour. “If I could only bake it,” she reflected, as she once more gazed gloomily out of the windows at the dripping world. “It’s easy enough to bake a cake,” she told herself, “and, of course, I could follow the recipe in mother’s cook book.” Still Nancy had misgivings concerning such an experiment. A cake for a sale should be good, of that she was certain, and for that very reason she had previously decided to buy one at the French Pastry Shop. “Well,” she sighed, “I may as well try it. It is sure to clear up just when the girls are due to call for me, and I simply couldn’t go without a cake.” First locking the store, and making up her mind that no call, however insistent, would tempt her to leave her task, Nancy promptly set about baking her cake. It was no trouble to find the cook book, Mrs. Brandon had found a small shelf suitable for that in the open pantry. Also, the required ingredients were all at hand, and the creaming of the butter and sugar, according to the first rule, Nancy executed with something like skill, for she had strong young hands and the spoon in her grasp quickly beat the butter and sugar together in a perfectly smooth paste. Then she put the flour in the sieve. In doing this she made a slight mistake, for no pan nor plate had been placed under the sieve and consequently a pretty little layer of the sifted flour showered out upon her table before she could get a receptacle under the utensil. “I had better measure over again,” Nancy decided, feeling that the uncertainty of guessing at the lost flour might spoil her cake. So this time she put in her baking powder, salt and flour, and sifted all into a little pudding pan. Separating the eggs, yolks from whites, was not quite so easily accomplished, but even that was finally managed, and now Nancy knew it was time to light the gas oven. Next, three-fourths of a cup of milk was added to the creamed butter and sugar, the egg yolks added to that and all well beaten. Then the flour was carefully turned in, while beating all together Nancy felt really elated at the prospect in sight. “I’m sure this will be fine,” she was congratulating herself, “perhaps even better than a store cake. And I know how to make the maple icing—I’m glad I have done that much before, at any rate,” she admitted ruefully. The soft yellow mixture did indeed look promising, but now came the time to fold in the whites of the eggs. “Fold in,” repeated Nancy, somewhat puzzled. “How shall I fold it in?” She looked at the batter and she looked at the frothy egg whites. To fold that in would surely mean to spoil all the nice, white, snowy mound of froth. Nancy hated to do it, but she finally spilled it into the bowl full, and started to beat it all over again. The batter seemed rather thin and Nancy decided to add a little more flour. Just here was where her inexperience threatened disaster, but the trial so fascinated the little cook that she did a few other things not proposed by the recipe, but all of which seemed reasonable to her. The oven was now sizzling hot, and Nancy quickly turned her mixture into two tins, which she neglected to grease, and slipped them into the oven. With a sense of satisfaction she turned to and really cleared up all the utensils—something very commendable indeed in Nancy Brandon. With watching the clock and getting Ted’s lunch set out on the little porch table, while she also managed somehow to start her own personal preparations for the afternoon, Nancy was, as she would say, kept on the jump. But the cake didn’t burn, and she took it from the oven on the dot of thirty minutes. “It will have to cool, I suppose,” Nancy guessed, “and while it’s cooling I’ll make the icing. It looks pretty good but it has got a lot of holes in it,” was her rather skeptical criticism, as she inspected the two layers of golden pastry. But the cake, even after a thorough cooling which consumed more time than could be spared, would not leave the tins! Nancy tried a knife—that broke a great rough corner off. Then she got the pancake turner and slipped it under as well as she could, but alas! The thing actually splashed up in a regular explosion of crumbs! “Ruined!” groaned Nancy. “I can never fix that!” Her disappointment was cruel. To see a perfectly good and such a fragrant cake go to pieces when finished, after all the work of getting it that far was nothing short of a tragedy. Tears blinded Nancy Brandon. “I might have known,” she sighed, “I just couldn’t have such good luck with cooking.” The rain was almost over. Ted would soon be in, but Nancy just couldn’t help crying. It was so hard not to succeed when she had been counting so especially on that afternoon’s fun. Perhaps she could get Ted to go to town for her after all. But upon serious consideration she decided against that plan. She simply wouldn’t go now under any circumstances. Her eyes were red and she wanted a good cry even more than the fun of the sale. In fact, she couldn’t help crying and she wasn’t going to try. When an hour later the girls called, Ted told them what was strictly true. Nancy was in bed with a sick headache and she couldn’t go. Carrying their messages of sympathy upstairs to Nancy, along with a plate full of broken cake and a glass of ice cold lemonade, Ted tried to cheer his disconsolate sister, but even then she had not discovered that the whole trouble was merely her neglect of greasing those cake tins. The cook book didn’t direct so simple a thing as that and, of course, poor Nancy just hadn’t noticed that her mother did it. She was usually too concerned about the remnants of cake dough being left in the bowl, to observe how the batter was being put in the pans. “Does it ache hard?” asked Ted, sitting beside his sister and referring to her head. “Yes, it does, Ted, but this lemonade is splendid.” “I can make good lemonade,” Ted admitted. “And your cake is swell, only it sticks awful. I got it out with the pie server,” he told Nancy simply. “Yes. I couldn’t get it to come off the pan at all. Well,” and Nancy moved to get up, “I suppose I won’t feel any worse down stairs. What color dress did Ruth have on?” To the best of his limited ability Ted described the girls’ costumes and then, determined to drive away Nancy’s blues, he started in to recite in detail his great experience of that morning. “Now Nan,” he began, “you can say all you like, but Mr. Sanders does disappear. I saw him!” “You saw him disappear!” “Yes, sure as shootin’. We were all running down the hill, trying to get to the station before that big shower, when I said to Tom, 'there’s Mr. Sanders, comin’ up.’ He said he saw him too, and we kept on runnin’, when I was just goin’ to shout hello, and true as I tell you, Nan, there wasn’t any Mr. Sanders anywhere in sight!” “Ted Brandon!” “Yep, that’s just what I’m telling you. We all saw him go, but no one saw where to.” And presently even the lost pleasure and the spoiled cake were soon forgotten in their discussion of Ted’s remarkable story. |
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