“We must set these out-of-doors to cool,” said Mrs. Stoddard; so Jimmie, Amos and Daniel were each entrusted with a pan to carry out on the broad step.
“When it is cool we will all work it,” said Mrs. Stoddard; “that means pull and twist it into sticks.”
It did not take long for the candy to cool, and then under Mrs. Stoddard’s directions each child was given a piece to work into shape. But the candy proved too tempting to work over, and in a few minutes the long bench was filled with a row of boys, each one happily chewing away upon a clumsy piece of molasses candy.
CHAPTER XV
A SPRING PICNIC
Before the six weeks of school came to an end Anne could read, and could write well enough to begin a letter to her father, although there seemed no chance of sending it. She thought often of her visit to Newburyport, and wondered if she would ever see Squire Coffin’s little niece again. And she remembered William Trull, and his little daughters of whom he had told her. But no news had come to Province Town of how Boston was faring.
A few weeks after Captain Enos’s trip to Boston another Province Town fisherman had started out with a cargo of fish, hoping for equal good fortune. But weeks passed and he did not return, and no tidings were heard of him, and his family and neighbors now feared that the British had captured his boat and taken him prisoner.
No word came to Anne from her father, and as the ice formed along the shore and over the brooks, the cold winds came sweeping in from sea with now and then a fall of snow that whitened the marshes and the woods, the little settlement on the end of Cape Cod was entirely shut off from news from Boston, and they knew not what the British were doing.