"Now how much shall I make? Barney and Tommie is awful eaters when it comes to somethin' good, and so is Larry. I'd ought to have enough."
He read over the directions.
"Seems to me this receipt sounds skimpin'," was his comment. "Somethin's got to be done about it. Most loike it wasn't made for a big family, but for a little wan loike General Brady's."
He ate another raisin.
"A little puddin's just nothin'," he said. "I'll just put in what the receipt calls for, and as much more of everything as it seems to need."
Busily he measured and stirred and tasted, and with every taste more sugar was added, for little Jim liked sweets. At last it was ready for the oven, even down to the raisins, which had been picked from their stems and all unwashed and unstoned cast into the pudding basin. And never before had that or any other pudding dish been so full. If Jim so much as touched it, it slopped over.
"And sure and that's because the puddin' dish is too little," he remarked to himself. "They'll have to be gettin' me a bigger wan. And how long will it take it to bake, I wonder? Till it's done, of course."
He turned to the stove, which was now in the house again, and the fire was out.
"Huh!" exclaimed little Jim. "I'll soon be makin' a fire."
He rushed for the kindling, picking out a swimming raisin as he ran. "They'll see the difference between Andy's cookin' and mine, I'm thinkin'. Dustin' and dishwashin'! Just as if I couldn't cook with the best of them!"