“I have told you to warm the flour. I suppose you didn’t make it very hot.”
“No; I did everything just as you showed me.”
Molly said nothing. Marta must be untruthful; this was a more unpleasant thing to discover than the failure of the bread.
“Well, we must have bread; it is four o’clock, and Saturday. I will make a rye loaf, because it needs to rise only once after it is mixed, and by seven o’clock it will be ready to bake.”
Molly measured the flour and set it to warm (she meant to make this bread herself, because she was much quicker than Marta). As she poured the hot water into the cold, to make the right temperature for the yeast, a thought struck her;—she always dissolved the yeast in the tin pint measure, and Marta did the same.
“Marta, after you put the yeast in the water, did you set it on the stove?”
“Yes, ma’am, the water was a little cool, and I set it there to dissolve; but I did not let it get a bit hot, and it was quite back of the stove.”
“That is the mystery then!” Molly had remembered hearing a lady speak of having done the same thing herself; and though it was back of the stove, and the water could not get hotter, the yeast, being at the bottom in contact with the hot iron, had baked or scalded. Of one thing she was very glad; Marta had immediately owned the fact, and the failure had not come from her neglect of any of the rules Molly had laid down,—only from not understanding cause and effect.