At this summons the Molasses Jug now appeared. Her gown was a beautiful shade of golden brown, with touches of sunshiny yellow here and there. She really wasn’t a jug, but looked like one from the fact that she kept her arm crooked up just like a jug handle.
TALE OF THE MOLASSES DOLL
“Well,” she said gaily. “Mr. Sugar pretty near told you my story, I stopped him just in time. I come in just where the juice from the sugar cane boils down thick. That was my own splendid self that was poured off.
“I love the time when I gurgle down into a barrel, and fairly hug myself when that barrel is in a grocery store waiting to be sold. I always wonder what kind of a home I am going to, and what will be done with me.
“I sit there in the dark, and presently the spigot in the barrel is turned, and the thick stream gurgles into jugs. The jugs are placed in a grocery wagon. The driver whistles a merry tune, and away we go into so many homes.
“I make so many good things, and it is such fun guessing what I’m going to be in each time. Sometimes it is gingerbread, or may be plump brown cookies. Again, it is pudding with fat plums swelling up inside.
“Once a grand thing happened. It was the day before Christmas. The driver was hurrying the horse along at the very edge of town.
“Suddenly something startled the horse, and he ran away. The wagon overturned. Everything was thrown about in the snow. My jug broke and I began to run out all over. I had good company though, for popcorn, cranberries, and all sorts of things were scattered about me.
“The grocery boy gathered up most of the stuff and away he went. I was hopeless, and thought what a miserable Christmas I was to have. No good to anybody. Suddenly I pricked up my ears. Children were crying, and I heard one say: