“Down to th’ village to get me some med’cine,” said Grandma. So Hannah flew out and over home, and Mrs. Higby sent one of the men in a pony-cart for Mrs. Fargo. By this time Candace was in a truly dreadful state with longing to see the face of this old friend. As that lady used to go with members of the King household to the little shop on Temple Place, the poor old black woman thought if she could only catch a sight of Mrs. Fargo, she would somehow get nearer to her “bressed chilluns.”
“How she does act, doesn’t she, Mrs. Higby?” cried Johnny, who now gave up all thoughts of the red-and-white drops, and crowding up to compass as much of this new excitement as possible.
“Hum! I don’t know as she’s any worse actin’ than some other folks not a thousand miles away,” said Mrs. Higby. “Well, I wish to goodness your ma would come;” and she hurried to crane her neck out of the window. “Now, thank fortune,” she cried joyfully, “here she is! Now, Johnny, you run off an’ play, that’s a good boy,” as Mrs. Fargo hurried in.
Johnny, thus dismissed, ran down the terraces, and over in the direction of the little brown house. He was never allowed to go in it without a maid, but this morning he determined to peep in one of the windows, “Just to see if everything’s there,” he said; and then, after that performance was over to his satisfaction, he began to play that he was really going in, and that he lived there, just as the little Peppers had told about so many times. And then he tried every door; and at last, to his astonishment, found the one in the “Provision Room” unlocked, as a careless maid who had been cleaning there that very morning, under Mrs. Higby’s direction, had left it.
“Oh, goody!” cried Johnny gleefully, racing in; “now I’m a little Pepper. I’m Joel—no, I don’t want to be Joel. I’m David—no, I don’t want to be David, either. I’ll be Ben—I’ll be Ben and Joel and David and all of ’em,” he declared, hurrying around. “Now, what shall I play first? I’ll—I’ll”—
His eyes fell on the stove. “I’m going to have a baking-day all to myself!” he cried in joyful tones, and capering in the middle of the kitchen. “Oh, won’t that be fine! And when they see what splendid cakes I can bake, they won’t care. Phooh! I can make better things than any of ’em, I b’lieve. And I know how to make the fire too.” He was now so busy that the old kitchen presented the appearance of being the scene of the most active operations of a dozen small boys, as he brought flour, trailing it all over the neat floor, and sugar and molasses from the buttery, leaving a chain of sticky drops everywhere he stepped, to run and get the rolling-pin and handsful of dishes.
“I better make my fire first,” he said in the midst of this, and dropping everything where he stood. “Now I must get the paper and the wood;” and he scuttled off to the “Provision Room” to bring them in. Then, stuffing them into the stove as tightly as he could cram them, Johnny backed off, and surveyed his work in great pride.
“Now, I know where the matches are kept,” he cried in a jubilant voice—“in the little blue dish on the shelf;” so pulling up a chair, he soon had them in his hand, and drawing one as he ran back, he had a merry little light that made him crow gleefully.
“There, now, sir-ee!” he cried, holding this to a bunch of paper that stuck up one end out of the stove; “you’ll burn, I guess, when I get hold of you. Yes, sir-ee!” but the fire running down the match-end and nipping his fingers, he twitched them off, to wipe them hastily on his blouse; what there was left of the match tumbling down back of him, in a small heap of paper and shavings that wouldn’t go into the stove.
Johnny rubbed his hands together joyfully, and hopped up and down before the stove. “Oh, what cakes I will bake!” he cried. “And perhaps I’ll put white on top of some of ’em; I haven’t decided yet. And I’ll make a gingerbread boy—I’ll make a dozen gingerbread boys—I’ll—”