“Jap always felt so smart,” declared Van enviously, “because he knew the Peppers first.” Percy looked as if he wanted to say as much, but concluded to keep still, and only readjusted his monocle to his satisfaction.
“We shouldn’t any of us have had or done anything if it hadn’t been for Jappy; hey, old fellow,” declared Ben, clapping him on the shoulder.
“And dear Grandpapa,” cried Phronsie, with a world of affection in her eyes, looking over at him.
“Well, Phronsie did it with her gingerbread boy,” said Jasper quickly. “It was Phronsie, after all, who brought us all together.”
And then everybody clamored for the story of the gingerbread boy again; so off they rushed on that, old Mr. King edging his chair a little nearer to the Pepper circle. And then Polly’s old stove had to come in for a share of attention, and how she had to stuff all the cracks with paper, and Ben stuffed it with putty, and— “Davie gave boot-tops,” broke in Joel, grimly even now at the remembrance of how he felt because he hadn’t any to give.
And then that brought up Mamsie’s birthday cake, and the momentous work of getting ready for its baking; and how Phronsie’s toe was pounded; and how good Grandma Bascom was, and how she wasn’t able now to get out of her bed because of the rheumatism, but that those guests who stayed over were to go down the lane to see her to-morrow.
And how the cake, compounded after “Mirandy’s weddin’ receet” was at last made, and hidden in the old cupboard.
“Joe was such a precious nuisance in those days,” said Jasper, “always poking and peering around; I suppose they were afraid he’d find it out.”
“We truly had a dreadful time,” said Polly, shaking her head, “to keep him away from that cupboard.”
“That old cupboard!” declared Joel, bounding out of the circle to swing wide the upper door. “Oh, what a lot of conniving, and how many dark conspiracies it might tell!”