One day I got him to give me his photograph. On the back of the picture is written, “Heinrich Schulze, geboren in Halle.” So I know exactly how his name is spelled. I am delighted to have his photograph, for it is so amusing and so “grown-up” to have a good many pictures in your album. Heinrich Schulze’s is the nicest one I have. He looks so free and easy, standing with his legs crossed, beside a curtain. I have an old picture of Father, and one of Grandfather, but that has his legs torn off. Then I have a picture of Mrs. Huus’s little dog; I begged that from the photographer because it was so sweet. And finally I have Marie Lokke’s lover. She wouldn’t keep his picture any longer, because he had become engaged to another girl without her knowing anything about it; so she gave his photograph to me. These are all the pictures I have,—few enough, it seems to me,—and Schulze’s is the very nicest. So you see that is why I am so friendly with him. If we had not been such good friends, there would not have been any molasses cake story.
I know just exactly the days when he bakes molasses cakes; and on those days I hang around the door and tease and tease.
“Give me a little dough, Schulze, just a little piece, Schulze.” And he almost always gives me some.
One Thursday afternoon, (my, how vividly I remember it!) Schulze, with the dough over his shoulder, came swinging out into the back yard where I sat on a barrel waiting. It happened that I had in my hand a tiny china doll, one of those little “bath dolls” without any clothes on.
Schulze was in grand good humor that day.
“It may happen that I shall be the master of this bakery here in the town. Then Heinrich Schulze will be on top and can snap his fingers at the whole world,” said Schulze, with the dough over his shoulder and snapping his fingers in the air as he spoke. I think that what made him so happy was that Mrs. Simonsen had been extra kind to him and he thought she would probably marry him; then he would be the master of the bakery.
I don’t know how I happened to think of it, but while Schulze stood there talking, I stuck that little china doll right into the dough. Schulze didn’t notice what I was doing. I smoothed over the place where I had poked the doll in and a moment after, Schulze vanished in the bake-house.
Ha, ha, ha! What fun it will be when he finds the doll in the dough! He won’t be the least bit angry; he will only laugh. So I sat still on the barrel and waited, but he didn’t come back.
Oh, well, he just wanted to fool me, I was sure; for of course he must have found the doll.
I stole over to the bake-house door. The molasses cakes were in the pans, ready to be put into the oven that minute.