"The time ain't so fur off." Grandmother appeared, with a round loaf of fruit cake on which one candle burned brightly. "You can take the candle right off if you want to. I only put it on for a joke. The cake is just what I always bake for you."
"Elizabeth can eat all the candle grease." Grandfather made an effort to frown, in which he succeeded only indifferently.
"I made it myself," Judidy cried, as Elizabeth counted her candles, "fourteen, and one to grow on."
"And did you make all the letters—'Elizabeth With Love?'—I think that's the nicest thing any birthday cake ever said on it."
"I was going to put on 'Elizabeth-aged-fourteen,' and then I thought that the candles would tell how old you were," the blushing Judidy hovered over her masterpiece, "and then I thought it was better to put on a kind of a message. I couldn't write a very long one, but I guess that says just as much as a whole sheet of paper."
"How did you make the letters so clear?"
"With a cornycopia. You colour your white frosting with strawberry juice, and then you make this here cornycopia out of letter paper, and then you sort of dribble it along and write with it."
"It looks lovely," Elizabeth said. "Thank you. Thank you, Judidy."
"Don't let your ice-cream melt," Peggy warned.
"You haven't let yours melt," Grandmother said, putting out her hand for the empty dish Peggy was waving.