"All?" echoed Keno. "By jinks! I can't make another before it's Christmas, to save my neck, and I used all the sugar and nearly all the flour we had."
"Is it a hopeless case?" inquired Jim.
"Some might not think so," poor Keno replied. "I scoured out the old
Dutch oven and I've got her in a-bakin', but—"
"Well, maybe she ain't so worse."
"Jim," answered Keno, tragically, "I didn't find out till I had her bakin' fine. Then I looked at the bottle I thought was the lemon extract, and, by jinks! what do you think?"
"I don't feel up to the arts of creatin' lemon-pies," confessed the miner, warming himself before the fire. "What happened?"
"You have to have lemon extract—you know that?" said Keno.
"All right."
"Well, by jinks, Jim, it wasn't lemon extract after all! It was hair-oil!"
A terrible moment of silence ensued.