el--how very dull and
forlorn he was feeling that morning, Prince and he shut up in-doors--and
how his father had had a miserable night, and had eaten scarcely no
breakfast, and just at this juncture there came a knock at the door,
"and" said Jasper, "your parcel walked in, all dressed up in flowers!"

"They weren't our flowers," said Polly, honestly. "Mrs. Blodgett put 'em
on."

"Well she couldn't have, if you hadn't sent the parcel," said Jasper in
a tone of conviction.

Then he launched out into a description of how they opened the
package--Prince looking on, and begging for one of the cakes.

"Oh, didn't you give him one?" cried Polly at this. "Good old Prince!"

"Yes I did," said Jasper, "the biggest one of all."

"The one I guess," interrupted Joel, "with the big raisin on top."

Polly spoke up quickly to save any more remarks on Joel's part. "Now
tell us about your father--and the 'gingerbread boy.'"

So Jasper broke out with a merry laugh, into this part of the story,
and soon had them all in such a gale of merriment, that Phronsie stopped
playing out on the door-step with Prince, and came in to see what the
matter was.

"Never mind," said Polly, trying to get her breath, just as Jasper was
relating how Mr. King set up the "gingerbread boy" on his writing table
before him, while he leaned back in his chair for a hearty laugh.

"And to make it funnier still," said Jasper "don't you think, a little
pen-wiper he has, made like a cap, hanging on the pen-rack above him,
tumbled off just at this very identical minute right on the head of the
'gingerbread boy,' and there it stuck!"

"Oh!" they all screamed, "if we could only have seen it."

"What was it?" asked Phronsie, pulling Polly's sleeve to make her hear.

So Jasper took her in his lap, and told how funny the "gingerbread boy"
looked with a cap on, and Phronsie clapped her hands, and laughed with
the rest, till the little old kitchen rang and rang again.

And then they had the baking! and Polly tied one of her mother's ample
aprons on Jasper, as Mrs. Pepper had left directions if he should come
while she was away; and he developed such a taste for cookery, and had
so many splendid improvements on the Peppers' simple ideas, that the
children thought it the most fortunate thing in the world that he came;
and one and all voted him a most charming companion.

"You could cook a Thanksgiving dinner in this stove, just as easy as
not," said Jasper, putt