"Mothah doesn't care if we have the gingahbread," said the Little Colonel, and Rob added, reassuringly, "We won't let her touch you. Now I'm going all the way around by the spring-house, so she can't see me, for I'm her sworn enemy. When I get under the pantry window I'll call like some bird—say a pewee. When you hear that, Pearline, you just come a-jumping. She always sets the things out on that shelf under the pantry window to cool, and you slip in and pass that gingerbread out to me before she has time to guess what's happened."
Rob started off, and a moment later the clear call of "pewee" floated up from under the pantry window, to the waiting group on the porch. "Come on, let's see the ogre get him," called Keith. Just as they rushed around the corner of the house they heard a scream, and then a mighty clatter of falling tinware in the kitchen made them pause.
There was a scurry of flying feet through the orchard, and a snapping of dry twigs. Rob had made his escape with the gingerbread, but hapless Pearline had fallen into the clutches of the ogre. Only for a moment, however. Through the window came a flash of red calico, and up the path two bare black legs went flying like run-away windmills. The broad slap-slap of Aunt Cindy's pursuing slipper soles followed, but it was an uneven race. Pearline, wasting not a single breath in outcry, fled around the house and down the avenue like a swift black shadow, and her panting pursuer was left to hold her fat sides in helpless wrath.
"Just you wait till I get my hands on you, chile," she called with an angry toss of her white-turbaned head. "I'll make you sma't! I'll learn you to come carryin' off white folkses vittles an' scarin' me out of my seven senses!"
"No, Aunt Cindy, you sha'n't touch her! You mustn't do a thing to Pearline," called the Little Colonel, meeting her squarely in the path and stamping her foot. "It's all ou' fault, because we sent her, and it was Rob who carried off the gingahbread. There he comes now."
Aunt Cindy darted an angry look at her sworn enemy, as he came up with hands and mouth both full. Then facing the children, with her hands on her hips, she launched into such a scolding as only an old black mammy, who has faithfully served three generations of a family, is permitted to give.
"For mercy sakes, Aunt Cindy, what are you making such a fuss for?" exclaimed Keith. "It's all your own fault. You know as well as we do that nobody in the Valley can make cake as good as yours. You oughtn't to have tempted us with such delicious gingerbread. It's the best I ever tasted." Here he stuffed his mouth full again, with an ecstatic "Yum, but that's good," and passed the plate back to Betty.
There was no resisting the flattery of Keith's expression as he swallowed the stolen sweets. A grim smile twitched Aunt Cindy's black face, but to hide the fact that her vanity had been touched by the chorus of unstinted praise which followed Keith's compliments, she began flapping her face with her gingham apron.
"Oh, you go 'long!" she exclaimed, in a gruff voice. But knowing Aunt Cindy, they knew that they had appeased her, and even Pearline need no longer fear her wrath, although she grumbled loudly all the way back to her savoury kitchen.
They carried the plate around to the porch, followed by the three Bobs in their big bows of yellow, pink, and green, who tumbled around their feet, begging for crumbs until the last one was eaten, and then curled up in the hammock beside Betty.