Mother took the pan out of the oven. She tipped out the gingerbread and put it on a rack and covered it with a cloth. “It looks very well,” she said.
The fragrance of that gingerbread filled the whole house. It even penetrated to the parlor where Timothy was sleeping on the couch. He had no business there and he got up and came into the kitchen. It was not because his conscience pricked him, however, but because of the gingerbread.
Lucy came back to the table where Dora was working. She was so proud of her cooking that she no longer felt cross. She took an apple which had a big speck on the side.
After dinner everybody hurried to get the dishes washed and then Mrs. Merrill and the children went to the city. There was no need to lock the house, for Mr. Merrill would be at home. The printing-press did not run on Saturday afternoons.
It was late before the shoppers came back. Dora did not wait to open the packages before telling Father that she had a pretty blue coat. Lucy had another brown one, not like her old coat, but a different shade of brown. To go with the coat was a round brown sailor hat with a ribbon hanging down the back. Dora’s hat was just like it, only dark blue, with a blue ribbon. Then Dora asked Father if he had been lonesome.
Father said he had been too busy to be lonesome. Dora wondered what he had been doing. On the floor before the Franklin stove was spread a newspaper, with chips on it, as though Father had been whittling.
Mr. Merrill looked at the new coats and hats and thought them very pretty. After supper, when they were all in the parlor, he began to whittle again.
Lucy and Dora were learning their Sunday-school lesson. Mrs. Merrill had just found out that they had not even looked at it, and she said it must be learned at once. She should be much ashamed of them if they went to Sunday school without knowing the lesson.
Dora hurried as much as she could. She read the lesson and looked up the Bible references and tried to answer the questions. But all the time she wondered what Father was making. As soon as she finished she asked him.
“What do they look like?” inquired Father.