“A raisin cookie!” cried Gassy.
No one stirred.
“With nuts in it!”
The child nearest the hay-loft began to wriggle backwards. “I get first choice!” she said.
“Second!”
“Third!”
The line took up the slow wriggle, and Barbara below watched, with her skirts also extended. She could think of nothing else to do.
“Slowly!” shouted Gassy militantly. “Keep below there, Mrs. Enderby. Each kid has to go down the ladder to Barbara for the cookie, an’ stay down. Then we’ll play down there.”
Children respond quickly to an appeal to the stomach. In less than five minutes, seventeen children were munching seventeen cookies, and a rousing game of “Drop the Handkerchief” had been started by a now thoroughly alert Barbara. Most of the children joined in with gusto. Mrs. Enderby picked up her palm-leaf, and tapped Gassy with it approvingly.
“Now you can just keep on helping by counting thirty-nine over and over again,” she said.