Dolly looked blank. "Make another!" she said slowly; "why it's three o'clock now, and the fair begins at four. We couldn't do it, Dot, and anyway we couldn't make a prize one. I wouldn't have the heart to try again as hard as I did for that one. Would you?"
"Yes, I would! I'd just like to fly at it and make one as good as that or better! I know who stole that cake, Dorinda Fayre! It was some girl who had made a cake herself and who was afraid ours would take the prize, and so she came and stole it!"
"Oh, Dorothy Rose! aren't you ashamed to think such a thing! And anyway, how could any girl do that even if she was mean enough?"
"Of course she could!" and Dotty's eyes flashed; "everybody knew about our cake, and they knew it would take the prize, and so of course they wanted it out of the way! Now that's just what happened, because it's the only thing that can have happened. As Mother says, there aren't any tramps around here. We always set cakes or pies on that window shelf and they've never been stolen. Come on, I say, let's make another; I hate to have any girl get ahead of me like that!"
"Oh, Dotty, it just seems as if I couldn't make another. Why we were three hours on that one this morning. It would be after six o'clock before we could get another done. And I know it wouldn't be any good, I'm too upset to make it properly. I'm all of a quiver. And besides we haven't all the things in the house."
"No, we've no pineapple. But let's make some other kind of a cake, chocolate, or something."
"Yes! I think I see a chocolate cake taking the prize! Why don't you make ginger-bread and be done with it? That prize won't go to any common kind of cake, like chocolate."
"It might if it was awful good chocolate. Oh, Dolly, our cake was so beautiful!" And Dotty's overwrought nerves gave way and she burst into violent sobbing.
"Well, crying won't do any good, Dot," and Dolly drew a long sigh; "I don't blame you for crying, 'cause I know you can't help it. But I can't seem to cry, I'm too—too flattened out."
Dolly looked the picture of disheartened woe, but it was not her nature to give way to tears. She felt absolutely dismayed and utterly cast down, as if under a depression that would not lift, but she gave no physical sign of this except by her tense, drawn face and her frequent despairing sighs.