"Well, be more careful the next time," admonished the black-eyed girl, retreating to the pantry for a fresh supply of sweetening; and Billiard, elated at the success of his first attempt, determined to try again.
"What in the world did you put in that salad dressing, Glory?" cried Tabitha, snatching up her glass of water with eager hands.
"What's the matter with it?" demanded the second cook, whose turn it was to wait upon the table that day.
"You used ginger 'stead of mustard," scolded Toady, who had a particular aversion for red hair, and took little pains to conceal it.
Gloriana had her suspicions as to how such an accident could have happened, but a hurried visit to the pantry disclosed the spice cans in their proper places, all correctly labelled; so she reluctantly admitted her mistake, but decided to keep her eyes open.
"There's soap in my glass of water," complained Irene at the next meal.
"Soap!" echoed Mercedes. "I washed those glasses myself, and never used a bit of soap on them! That's the way mamma told us to wash them."
But the fact still remained that not only was Irene's glass soapy, but more than half the dishes on the table tasted of Fels Naptha. Tabitha looked concerned, but Billiard and Toady were so innocent appearing that she never suspected them of having had a hand in the affair.
The next time it was Tabitha's biscuits. When they appeared on the table they were as thin as wafers and as hard as bricks. In some way she had substituted corn starch for baking powder; but as another hurried visit to the pantry showed both articles where they belonged on their respective shelves, she concluded that carelessness on her part had caused the trouble, and let the matter drop.
Then the house began to be infested with all sorts of obnoxious insects and reptiles. Mercedes found two huge grasshoppers in the soup one day; a long, wriggling centipede fell out of the cook-book as Tabitha turned its pages in search of a favorite recipe; a scorpion dropped off the cake plate which Gloriana was in the act of passing, so frightening the girl that she dashed cake, dish and all onto the floor, and promptly had hysterics. Horned toads, ugly lizards, and worms of every description made their appearance by the dozen, until even Tabitha grew alarmed; but still she did not suspect the cause of such an invasion, as the two brothers were apparently as docile and obedient as their gentler cousins.