"Well, I don't know. Can't you both play something here until Daddy comes home? Why don't you play bean-bag?"
"We did, but Hal always throws 'em over my head and I can't reach," Mab said.
"She throws crooked," complained Hal.
"Oh, my dears! I think you each must have the Spring Fever!" laughed Mother Blake. "Try and be nicer toward one another. Let me see now. How would you like to help me bake a cake, Mab?"
"Oh, that will be fun!" and Mab jumped up from the porch, where she had been sitting near her mother's rocking chair, and began to clap her hands. "May I stir it myself, and put the dough in the pans?
"Yes, I think so."
"Pooh! That's no fun for me!" remarked Hal. "I want to have some fun, too."
"You may clean out the chocolate or frosting dish—whichever kind of a cake we make," offered Mab. "You always like to scrape out the chocolate dish, Hal."
"Yes, I like that," he said, smiling a little.
"Well, you may have it all alone this time, if I make the cake," went on Mab. Nearly always she and Hal shared this pleasure—that of scraping out, with a knife or spoon, the chocolate or sugar icing dish from which Mother Blake took the sweet stuff for the top and inside the layers of the cake. "Come on, Hal!"