“I am always sure that you can do it, little girl,” her mother told her, as they all three turned in to clear away the table things, “but I also know you have to find things out for yourself. How did you manage it all so nicely?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to tell you,” Nancy sighed, “but I might just as well.”
“Better,” chimed in Ted mischievously, as he scurried around to do his part in the clearing up ceremony.
“All right,” Nancy agreed affably. “I had better tell you, Mother. You see, it was the day of the sale—the church sale the girls were all going to. And I expected to get my cake at the French Bakery.”
“And you couldn’t on account of the rain,” Mrs. Brandon helped the recital along.
“It never stopped for one half hour,” Nancy added. “So I tried, that is I just tried to make a cake.”
She drew in her lips and puckered her pretty face into a wry misgiving expression. Nancy was looking very pretty in her rose colored linen dress (the one her mother had finished off with peasant embroidery), and her dark eyes were agleam now with enthusiasm and interest.
Frankly she told her mother the story of her spoiled cake, and how they all three laughed when the mother explained why it had failed—just because Nancy didn’t know enough to grease the tins!
Ted, all this time, was casting suspicious glances first at Nancy then at his mother. He seemed to be enjoying a secret that even his glances were not imparting to the others.
“You may run along, Ted,” his mother told him, as she always excused him just a little earlier than she and Nancy were prepared to finish. “I guess you can call your part complete. Here dear. I’ll put the sweeper away. You run, I hear some code whistling at the side window.”