But finally the little mischief-maker got the dough in his hat just about thick enough—not too much flour and not too much water in it. When this point was reached he knew that it was time to get ready for the baking part—putting the dough in the pans so it would go into the oven.
Trouble wanted to do as much toward making his own cake as he could without asking Nora to help. So now he thought he could put the dough in the baking pans himself. But they were on the table beyond his reach. He must get up to reach them.
So Trouble got up, and then—
Well, you can just imagine what happened. He forgot that he was holding in his lap the hat full of dough and as soon as he stood up of course that slipped from his lap and the table and went splashing all over the floor.
"Squee-squish-squash!" the hat full of dough dropped.
"Oh!" exclaimed Trouble. "Oh!"
His feet were covered with the white flour and water. Some splashed on Nora's chair near the table, some splashed on the table legs and more spread over the tent floor and ran in little streams toward the far edges. And, in the midst of it, like a little island in the middle of a lake of dough, was Trouble's new hat. Only now you could hardly tell which was the hat and which was the dough.
"Trouble's cake all gone!" said the little fellow sadly, and just as he said that back came Nora. She gave one look inside her nice, clean tent-kitchen—at least it had been clean when she left it—and then she cried:
"Oh, Trouble Martin! What have you gone and done?"
"Trouble make a cake but it spill," he said slowly, climbing down from the table.