“Well,” she said gaily. “Mr. Sugar pretty near told you my story, I stopped him just in time. I come in just where the juice from the sugar cane boils down thick. That was my own splendid self that was poured off.

“I love the time when I gurgle down into a barrel, and fairly hug myself when that barrel is in a grocery store waiting to be sold. I always wonder what kind of a home I am going to, and what will be done with me.

“I sit there in the dark, and presently the spigot in the barrel is turned, and the thick stream gurgles into jugs. The jugs are placed in a grocery wagon. The driver whistles a merry tune, and away we go into so many homes.

“I make so many good things, and it is such fun guessing what I’m going to be in each time. Sometimes it is gingerbread, or may be plump brown cookies. Again, it is pudding with fat plums swelling up inside.

“Once a grand thing happened. It was the day before Christmas. The driver was hurrying the horse along at the very edge of town.

“Suddenly something startled the horse, and he ran away. The wagon overturned. Everything was thrown about in the snow. My jug broke and I began to run out all over. I had good company though, for popcorn, cranberries, and all sorts of things were scattered about me.

“The grocery boy gathered up most of the stuff and away he went. I was hopeless, and thought what a miserable Christmas I was to have. No good to anybody. Suddenly I pricked up my ears. Children were crying, and I heard one say:

“‘Can’t have any Christmas at all. Not a speck of anything. No money to buy anything with!’

“A group of them were trudging through the snow from school. When they saw me one said: ‘What’s that?’

“Wasn’t I glad I was molasses. Most anything else would have been of no use at such a time. I could hardly keep still when I saw one after another poke a finger into the brown mass and taste.

“‘Molasses!’ they cried in one breath.

“With a whoop of delight they ran into a nearby home, and came back with a pail and cups. The snow had a glassy crust and I hadn’t sunken in at all. So all they had to do was to scoop, and there I was. They scooped and scraped till they had a good pail full.

“I saw a few ears of popcorn that had lodged down in a little hollow, so I let a small stream run after them. The children spied them, and such a shout went up as you never heard! Luckily the snow was fresh fallen and clean, so they really had made quite a find.

“We were hurried into the house, and when the mother and father came home from their work, looking sad enough because they could not give the children any Christmas, they were greeted with the cries of ‘Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!’

“It would have done your hearts good to have seen that candy pull, and the popcorn balls were the finest ever made. They had a perfectly good Christmas that didn’t cost a cent.

“So I think molasses is quite important in this world even if it is cheap.”

Molasses sat down amid a round of applause.

“What a nice story! I wish some one would tell another,” murmured little Allspice, whose earnest blue eyes and clasped hands showed how she had loved the story.

“A splendid idea! The night is slowly passing; perhaps some of us may think up some interesting stories; incidents we have seen in our various home lands.