“Maria,” said I, “my Aunt Kezia has sent me to make jumballs, and I don’t know how, not one bit!”
“Don’t you, Miss Cary?” said Maria, laughing: “well, I reckon I do. Half a pound of butter—will you weigh it yourself, Miss?—and the same of white sugar, and a pound of flour, and three ounces of almonds, and three eggs, and a little lemon peel—that’s what you’ll want.” (Note 2.)
We were going about the buttery, as she spoke, gathering up and weighing these things, and putting them together on the kitchen table. Then Maria tied a big apron on me, which she said was Fanny’s, and gave me a little pan in which she bade me melt the butter. Then I had to beat the sugar into it, and then came the hard part—breaking the eggs, for only the yolks were wanted. I spoiled two, and then I said,—
“Maria, do break them for me! I shall never manage this business.”
“Oh yes, you will, Miss Cary, in time,” says she, cheerily. “It comes hard at first, till you’re used to it. Most things does. See now, you pound them almonds—I have blanched ’em—and I’ll put the eggs in.”
So we put in the yolks of eggs, and the almonds, and the flour, and the lemon peel, till it began to smell uncommon good, and then Maria showed me how to make coiled-up snakes of it on the baking-tin, as jumballs always are: and I washed my hands, and took off Fanny’s apron, and went back into the parlour.
I found there all whom I had left, and Hatty and Flora as well. When tea came, and my jumballs with it, my Aunt Kezia says very calmly,—
“Pass me those jumballs, my dear, will you? Amelia won’t want any; she is an uncommon woman, and does not care what she eats. You may give me some, because I am no better than other folks.”
“O Aunt Kezia, but I like jumballs!” said Amelia.
“You do?” says my Aunt Kezia. “Well, but, my dear, they don’t grow on trees. Somebody has to make them, if they are to be eaten; and ’tis quite as well we are not all uncommon women, or I fear there would be none to eat.—Cary, you deserve a compliment, if you made these all by yourself.”