Grandma rustled away to meet her company, and Araminta opened the oven door importantly. She was seldom trusted to take the pies from the oven alone, and she felt very grown-up indeed to have Sunny Boy see her do it. She got the three pies out nicely, and the little saucer pie, too, and carried them into the pantry to cool. She set them on a shelf over the flour barrel.
“Grandma puts them on the table,” suggested Sunny Boy.
“Well, I put them on the shelf,” said Araminta shortly. “I don’t believe in leaving pies around where any one can get ’em.”
Now Araminta was in a hurry to go home, for it was three o’clock, and every afternoon from three to five she was allowed to spend as she pleased. So, though she made the kitchen nice and neat before she left, in her hurry she forgot to put the lid on the flour barrel, something Grandma always did.
“I’m going,” said Araminta, putting on her hat with a jerk. “Mind you don’t get into any mischief, and don’t go bothering your grandma. Mrs. Lawyer Allen is nervous, and she doesn’t like children.”
Araminta, you see, had so many brothers and sisters younger than herself that she gave advice to every child she met.
Sunny Boy was perfectly willing to be good, but he was equally determined to have his saucer pie. It was his own pie, made and intended for him, and Araminta had no business to put it on a shelf out of his reach. As soon as the kitchen door closed he got a chair and dragged it into the pantry.
“It’s mine,” he told himself, as he stood on the chair.
He pushed a white bowl out of the way, for he remembered the yellow custard he had knocked over on his first adventure in Grandma’s pantry. He put his hand on his pie and had it safe when Bruce began to bark suddenly outside the window. Sunny Boy leaned over to see out the window, the chair tipped, and with a crash a frightened little boy fell into the flour barrel which the careless Araminta had left uncovered directly under the shelf.
The noise of the falling chair brought Grandma and her visitor to the pantry.