Zip at the Candy Pull

That evening the doctor had no calls to make, so Zip was left to amuse himself as best he could. He had finished telling Tabby about the monkey and the turkey and was wondering what to do with himself when he heard children laughing in the back yard of the house opposite. Looking up, he saw that the house was lighted more than was usual, and he knew right away that they must be having a little dance or a children's party of some kind. Just then he thought he got a whiff of boiling molasses. He stuck his nose up in the air and gave a long sniff. Yes, it was molasses he smelled!

"They are having a candy pull. That's what is going on! I'll just go over and stick around until they have refreshments, and then perhaps I can sneak into the kitchen and steal a piece of cake," thought Zip.

But alas! He was so busy gazing up at the lighted windows to see what was going on inside the house, that he neglected to look where he was stepping, and the first thing he knew, he was standing with all four feet in a pan of hot molasses candy. And he found himself sticking fast in an entirely different way than he had meant when he left home. The candy was just in that state of cooling when the top is a little hard and the bottom is soft and sticky. So when he tried to lift his feet, the candy pulled up from the bottom of the pan and made long, stringy ends, but did not leave his feet. Instead it got between his toes and held him still faster. He tried to bite it off, but instead of coming off, it only stuck to his teeth and he found himself sticking to the pan with his mouth as well as his feet. Indeed, he was held securely by the sticky, stringy candy. Just then he thought he heard the children coming to see if their sweets were cool.

Yes, they were surely coming! He could not stand it to have these children he saw every day find him in such a fix. He would never hear the last of it. So he made a frantic effort to loosen himself. In doing this he pulled backwards so far that his feet slipped somehow, and he sat down in the candy. And now he was caught! For his four feet, mouth, one ear and tail were all sticking to the pan of candy. As the children began to come down the back steps, he gave one yelp, doubled himself up and began to roll, so that what the children saw was a big ball of molasses candy rolling down the sloping walk. All they could see in the semi-darkness was the candy, for Zip was too balled up to show a bit of dog sticking out of the soft mess.

The children ran after it, screaming with laughter, but when they caught up to the rolling ball and discovered their well-known, mischievous Zip rolled up so tight he was helpless, they clapped their hands with delight. He looked so crestfallen and funny that they forgave him on the spot for the loss of their candy. How they did shout with laughter as they were trying to get the candy off him!

"I know the best way to get the sticky stuff off," said Helen Hardway, the little girl who was giving the party. "Let's put him in the bath tub and soak it off."

"Just the very thing!" one of the boys replied. "Wait till I get something to wrap him in so I won't get all stuck up with the candy."

On hearing this, Zip began to struggle and squirm, for he had visions of hot water and soapsuds in his eyes, with each one of the children feeling it was their duty to give him an extra scrub.

"Here, you Zip, keep still, or you'll slip out of the apron you're wrapped in and get my best suit all sticky," called the little boy who held him in his arms and was carrying him up to the bathroom.

By squeezing him tightly, the boy managed to get him to the room and was just about to drop him in the tub from the apron when he discovered that the apron was sticking to the candy. One of the boys gave it a jerk to loosen it, but sad to relate, he gave too vigorous a pull and Zip dropped from the boy's arms, not into the tub, but at one side and by a mighty effort he gave himself two rolls which brought him to the head of the stairs. Another roll sent him tumbling bumpety-bump down the long flight that led to the kitchen. On the way he hit a hamper of clothes on the landing, and it joined him and went bumpety-bump, bangety-bang to the bottom and out into the kitchen, hitting the waitress who was carrying a tray of glasses filled with fruit lemonade to the little guests in the parlors who had not joined in the dog hunt.

The sudden appearance of a hamper apparently on legs coming toward her, surprised her, but nothing like the queer thing that was rolling about her feet, and which she could not see for the big tray in her hands. She could not seem to escape it, and finally she stumbled and fell, sending the glasses of delicious lemonade flying in all directions.

Hearing a noise on the back stairs, as if the house was falling, Mrs. Hardway went to see what the trouble was, and opened the kitchen door just in time to receive a full glass of lemonade squarely on the chest.

When the waitress stumbled, she fell on Zip, pinning him under her. In his roll down the stairs, he had lost some of the candy, so that now his mouth and nose were free, though he was minus a tooth and several of his long smeller whiskers. Now he began to howl as if being killed. This brought more of the guests to the spot, and you would have laughed could you have seen their faces when first they peered into the kitchen, which looked as if a cyclone had struck it.

A few feet from the door was the maid, sitting with limbs outspread, too dazed to move, while from under the corner of her skirt rolled a big, sticky ball of some kind that howled as it rolled. Beyond him was an overturned hamper of soiled clothes, with stockings, collars, sheets and petticoats spilling out of it. At the other end of the room stood Mrs. Hardway, wiping the lemonade off her dress, while all over the place were slices of lemon and pieces of fruit and Maraschino cherries. When all the children came from upstairs, they told Mrs. Hardway how it had all come about from Zip getting in their candy and their trying to wash it off his coat.

As Zip was still in a ball and could not extricate himself, the same boy who had carried him to the bathroom before, put the apron around him again and took him back upstairs.

This time they got him in the tub safely and began to turn the water in. The tub was slippery, and so was the candy, and as the water crept up to where Zip was tied, not hand and foot, but worse still, head, nose, ears and all four legs as well as tail, he howled and howled until one could have heard him a block away. He was so afraid of being drowned before the water would soak off the candy and when the children tried to pull it off it nearly killed him with pain, for it took all the little fine hairs of his coat with it.

The window of the bathroom was open and the doctor, coming out on his front porch to look at the sky before retiring, heard Zip howling somewhere across the street. He was crying in such a pitiful, frightened manner that the doctor knew he must be fast somewhere or hurt so he could not get home. Consequently he hurried across the street to see where his pet was, with the worried Tabby close at his heels.

The doctor made the circuit of the house and stable yard but could find no Zip. The howls seemed to come from up in the air somewhere as from the top of the house, so finally the doctor rapped on the Hardway kitchen door to ask the maid if Zip had not slipped in the house and gotten up on the roof. He knocked repeatedly but no one answered. As he still heard Zip howling and several people were talking all at once, he made bold to open the door and step in. What he saw you already know. As by this time the children had started to bathe Zip, the doctor was told to go right upstairs. When he appeared in the door all the children stopped laughing and stepped back to give him a chance to see Zip.

And this is what he saw.

Just one of Zip's eyes stuck out of a hole where the candy had dropped off, and his poor little tail stuck out like a handle on the other side of the ball. That was all that could be seen of Zip at that moment, for in his numerous rolls, the candy had spread all over him until he was no longer a dog with legs but just one round ball of molasses candy.

Seeing the water was fast climbing up to where it would reach Zip's mouth, and knowing it would drown him, the doctor turned off the spigot. The children had never thought that the poor dog could not move his head to keep out of the water. Now the doctor hurriedly took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and in a jiffy had Zip and the molasses ball in his hands and was holding it so that the water could not get to Zip's head. Then with one hand he gently threw the water upon the candy until it began to loosen and fall off. First he released the little dog's head, which had been bent down between his fore legs. As the candy began to loosen and drop off, first one black ear stood up and then the other, and last the little legs began to shoot out. All this made the children laugh to see what appeared to be a big ball of candy develop into a little dog. At last when Zip was entirely clean and had been wrapped in a big bath towel to dry, Doctor Elsworth apologized to Helen for his little dog spoiling her candy pull. But she declared that he had given them more fun than if he had not come over, and the molasses had cooled and they had had a regular candy pull.

But when it came to apologizing to Mrs. Hardway for the mess Zip had caused in the kitchen, the doctor did not know what to say, he felt so badly about it. But he could have saved himself all the worry, for Mrs. Hardway was a sensible woman and knew that accidents will happen, and she met with the doctor smilingly. Besides, the doctor had been her family physician for years, and they were all very, very fond of him as well as of Zip. It was hard to think of the doctor without Zip, as they were always together. So when the doctor began to apologize, Mrs. Hardway stopped him short, and told him to drink Zip's health in a glass of freshly made lemonade, and say no more about it. The doctor, thanking her from the bottom of his heart, drank not to Zip's health, but to hers, and thus the exciting evening ended peacefully and everyone was happy, including Zip, as the doctor gave him all the Maraschino cherries in his glass, something he dearly loved, though you may think it was a queer thing for a little dog to like.