Schulze never likes to have any one come into the bake-house, so I dared not go farther than the door. Not a word did he say about the doll. He was surely trying to fool me into thinking he had not found it. Suddenly I remembered that I had not studied my lessons; so I at once started on a run for home.
That whole evening I laughed to myself every time I thought of the doll in the cakedough. I would get the little thing back from Schulze in the morning. But he said not a word about it then, either; nor was he the least bit roguish or joky.
Suppose he hadn’t found the doll! Suppose it was baked in a cake and sold, and should get into some one’s stomach and the person should die of it!
That was a dreadful thought, and I grew so frightened, oh! so frightened; but I didn’t dare say a word to any one about it. Mrs. Simonsen and Schulze would both be furious, and perhaps some one in the town was dying to-day—it might be just now—some one dying from that molasses cake with my little china doll in it!
Oh, how I did suffer that day! I begged Father for twenty öre and spent it all on molasses cakes, for perhaps the little doll might be in one of those I bought. No such good luck. I ate so many molasses cakes, I got perfectly sick of them; I ate them with despair in my heart.
At last I stationed myself beside the steps of Mrs. Simonsen’s shop and stared at every one who came out who had bought molasses cakes. “Perhaps it is you who will get the doll in your stomach,—or perhaps it is you,” I kept thinking. But if it had been to save my life, I could not have said anything to them even though I was so worried.
When children bought the cakes, however, I took their cakes without any ceremony and squeezed them to find out whether the doll was inside. No, I did not find it.
At last I was really sick, I was so anxious. Several times I was on the point of going in and telling Mrs. Simonsen; but it would be so difficult and so frightfully embarrassing. Anyway, I couldn’t muster up courage enough to do it.
The day dragged on. At night I dreamed of the doll in the cake and in the afternoon when I came from school, I sat again on the steps of the bakery. Mrs. Simonsen stood in the doorway, sunning herself.
“It is warm and pleasant these days,” said Mrs. Simonsen.