THE FAILURE
The days were slipping by, and Nancy found herself entangled in a rather
confused vacation. True, she had already reaped real benefit from the
big sale and from the subsequent days' sales in her shop, but was it
really being a vacation?
It must be admitted that Nancy had a tendency to stubbornness, but since
that peculiarity very often marks the first stages of a strong
character, her mother wisely allowed her to continue to try things out
for herself. The Whatnot Shop was not proving in any way a
disappointment, but it was most certainly giving Nancy work, so that she
was not free to come and go with the other girls, in spite of Miss
Manners frequent and generous offers to "'tend store" for her.
A bright spot on her calendar not very far off, was the coming of Mrs.
Brandon's vacation. Soon she would be at home, free to do all the
precious things a devoted mother plans to do in the little interval of
freedom so long looked forward to and so quickly spent.
"When you are home," Nancy would continually plan, "I'm going to do
that," referring to any one of a number of things being postponed.
Today it was raining; a sudden summer shower was drenching everything as
if rain had never had such a good time before, and a charity sale, in
which all the girls were interested, was to be held that afternoon.
Everyone, including Nancy, expected to attend, and she with others had
promised to donate a cake.
But how it rained! And Nancy had planned to go into town to the fancy
bakers to get her cake. Hour after hour she hoped the rain would cease,
until it became too late for a telephone delivery, and still Nancy could
not go out in the downpour.
"If I could only bake it," she reflected, as she once more gazed
gloomily out of the windows at the dripping world. "It's easy enough to
bake a cake," she told herself, "and, of course, I could follow the
recipe in mother's cook book."
Still Nancy had misgivings concerning such an experiment. A cake for a
sale should be good, of that she was certain, and for that very reason
she had previously decided to buy one at the French Pastry Shop.
"Well," she sighed, "I may as well try it. It is sure to clear up just
when the girls are due to call for me, and I simply couldn't go without
a cake."
First locking the store, and making up her mind that no call, however
insistent, would tempt her to leave her task, Nancy promptly set about
baking her cake. It was no trouble to find the cook book, Mrs. Brandon
had found a small shelf suitable for that in the open pantry. Also, the
required ingredients were all at hand, and the creaming of the butter
and sugar, according to the first rule, Nancy executed with something
like skill, for she had strong young hands and the spoon in her grasp
quickly beat the butter and sugar together in a perfectly smooth paste.
[Illustration: Nancy promptly set about baking her cake.]
Then she put the flour in the sieve. In doing this she made a slight
mistake, for no pan nor plate had been placed under the sieve and
consequently a pretty little layer of the sifted flour showered out upon
her table before she could get a receptacle under the utensil.
"I had better measure over again," Nancy decided, feeling that the
uncertainty of guessing at the lost flour might spoil her cake. So this
time she put in her baking powder, salt and flour, and sifted all into a
little pudding pan. Separating the eggs, yolks from whites, was not
quite so easily accomplished, but even that was finally managed, and now
Nancy knew it was time to light the gas oven.
Next, three-fourths of a cup of milk was added to the creamed butter and
sugar, the egg yolks added to that and all well beaten. Then the flour
was carefully turned in, while beating all together Nancy felt really
elated at the prospect in sight.
"I'm sure this will be fine," she was congratulating herself, "perhaps
even better than a store cake. And I know how to make the maple
icing--I'm glad I have done that much before, at any rate," she admitted
ruefully.
The soft yellow mixture did indeed look promising, but now came the time
to fold in the whites of the eggs.
"Fold in," repeated Nancy, somewhat puzzled. "How shall I fold it in?"
She looked at the batter and she looked at the frothy egg whites. To
fold that in would surely mean to spoil all the nice, white, snowy mound
of froth. Nancy hated to do it, but she finally spilled it into the bowl
full, and started to beat it all over again. The batter seemed rather
thin and Nancy decided to add a little more flour. Just here was where
her inexperience threatened disaster, but the trial so fascinated the
little cook that she did a few other things not proposed by the recipe,
but all of which seemed reasonable to her.
The oven was now sizzling hot, and Nancy quickly turned her mixture into
two tins, which she neglected to grease, and slipped them into the oven.
With a sense of satisfaction she turned to and really cleared up all the
utensils--something very commendable indeed in Nancy Brandon. With
watching the clock and getting Ted's lunch set out on the little porch
table, while she also managed somehow to start her own personal
preparations for the afternoon, Nancy was, as she would say, kept on the
jump.
But the cake didn't burn, and she took it from the oven on the dot of
thirty minutes.
"It will have to cool, I suppose," Nancy guessed, "and while it's
cooling I'll make the icing. It looks pretty good but it has got a lot
of holes in it," was her rather skeptical criticism, as she inspected
the two layers of golden pastry. But the cake, even after a thorough
cooling which consumed more time than could be spared, would not leave
the tins!
Nancy tried a knife--that broke a great rough corner off. Then she got
the pancake turner and slipped it under as well as she could, but alas!
The thing actually splashed up in a regular explosion of crumbs!
"Ruined!" groaned Nancy. "I can never fix that!"
Her disappointment was cruel. To see a perfectly good and such a
fragrant cake go to pieces when finished, after all the work of getting
it that far was nothing short of a tragedy.
Tears blinded Nancy Brandon.
"I might have known," she sighed, "I just couldn't have such good luck
with cooking."
The rain was almost over. Ted would soon be in, but Nancy just couldn't
help crying. It was so hard not to succeed when she had been counting so
especially on that afternoon's fun. Perhaps she could get Ted to go to
town for her after all. But upon serious consideration she decided
against that plan. She simply wouldn't go now under any circumstances.
Her eyes were red and she wanted a good cry even more than the fun of
the sale. In fact, she couldn't help crying and she wasn't going to try.
When an hour later the girls called, Ted told them what was strictly
true. Nancy was in bed with a sick headache and she couldn't go.
Carrying their messages of sympathy upstairs to Nancy, along with a
plate full of broken cake and a glass of ice cold lemonade, Ted tried to
cheer his disconsolate sister, but even then she had not discovered that
the whole trouble was merely her neglect of greasing those cake tins.
The cook book didn't direct so simple a thing as that and, of course,
poor Nancy just hadn't noticed that her mother did it. She was usually
too concerned about the remnants of cake dough being left in the bowl,
to observe how the batter was being put in the pans.
"Does it ache hard?" asked Ted, sitting beside his sister and referring
to her head.
"Yes, it does, Ted, but this lemonade is splendid."
"I can make good lemonade," Ted admitted. "And your cake is swell, only
it sticks awful. I got it out with the pie server," he told Nancy
simply.
"Yes. I couldn't get it to come off the pan at all. Well," and Nancy
moved to get up, "I suppose I won't feel any worse down stairs. What
color dress did Ruth have on?"
To the best of his limited ability Ted described the girls' costumes and
then, determined to drive away Nancy's blues, he started in to recite in
detail his great experience of that morning.
"Now Nan," he began, "you can say all you like, but Mr. Sanders does
disappear. _I saw him!_"
"_You_ saw him disappear!"
"Yes, sure as shootin'. We were all running down the hill, trying to get
to the station before that big shower, when I said to Tom, 'there's Mr.
Sanders, comin' up.' He said he saw him too, and we kept on runnin',
when I was just goin' to shout hello, and true as I tell you, Nan, there
wasn't any Mr. Sanders anywhere in sight!"
"Ted Brandon!"
"Yep, that's just what I'm telling you. We all saw him go, but no one
saw where to."
And presently even the lost pleasure and the spoiled cake were soon
forgotten in their discussion of Ted's remarkable story.