"Oh, I left mine in the committee room. You know the committee take all the cakes, and then those that haven't any chance at all, they send out to the cake table to be sold. But the ones that have a chance at the prize they keep for final decision. They've kept mine so far, but Edith Holmes' was just sent out. It's too bad, it's a lovely chocolate cake."
"It is too bad," agreed Dotty, "but I don't believe a chocolate cake will take the prize, do you?"
"No, probably not," said Maisie. "Mine's a variety cake. What sort is yours?"
Dotty hesitated, for she well knew they had no cake in the committee room, but Dolly said: "We made up ours. We mixed things together that we never heard of combining before. It was mostly Dot's invention."
"But Dolly made the layers and did the icing," put in Dotty, unwilling to take all the credit.
"Sounds lovely," said Maisie, and then her attention was diverted elsewhere and she ran away.
No more embarrassing questions were asked, for every one assumed that Dotty and Dolly had given their cake to the committee when they arrived.
A dozen times during the afternoon they were asked, "Has your cake been sent out yet?" And they truthfully answered no.
But no hint could they glean from the words or looks of any girl to make them suspect wrong-doing.
"I can't keep it up any longer, Dot," said Dolly at last, in an undertone. "I feel as if I'm telling a lie, when I let them all think we have a cake with the committee."