“She’s going to put these in a cake.”

“I like mince-pies better’n cake,” returned Gilbert.

“I don’t eat ’em,” responded the boy from New York disdainfully, “and my mamma’s fankful I don’t!”

“What do you eat?” asked Jimmy.

Dick considered a moment.

“Apple-pie and cream candy and wedding-cake. Sometimes I eat bread and butter—if there’s jelly on it.”

“Oh!” said Jimmy with great respect, mingled perhaps with a little envy.

Did this come of living “back East” in New York? What more delightful than to be Dick Somers, and live where you have wedding-cake every day of your life!

“But,” ventured Jimmy with rising courage, “maybe this will be wedding-cake that mamma’s going to make. She didn’t say.”

The other boys laughed, and Dick said,—