bowl, and
after that she busied herself beating eggs and sugar and butter all
together in another bowl: and after a while she took the flour and beat
it in also.

"Now I am in grand company," said the flour. "The eggs and butter are the
colour of gold, the sugar is like silver or diamonds. This is the very
society for me."

"The cake looks rich," said one of the daughters.

"It's rather too rich for them children," said her mother. "But Lawsey, I
dunno, neither. Nothin' don't hurt 'em. I reckon they could eat a panel
of rail fence and come to no harm."

"I'm rich," said the flour to itself. "That is just what I intended from
the first. I am rich and I am a cake."

Just then, a pair of big brown eyes came and peeped into it. They
belonged to a round little head with a mass of tangled curls all over
it--they belonged to Vivian.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Cake."

"Who made it?"

"I did."

"I like you," said Vivian. "You're such a nice woman. Who's going to eat
any of it? Is Lionel?"

"I'm afraid it's too rich for boys," said the woman, but she laughed and
kissed him.

"No," said Vivian. "I'm afraid it isn't."

"I shall be much too rich," said the cake, angrily. "Boys, indeed. I was
made for something better than boys."

After that, it was poured into a cake-mould, and put into the oven,
where it had rather an unpleasant time of it. It was so hot in there
that if the farmer's wife had not watched it carefully, it would have
been burned.

"But I am cake," it said, "and of the richest kind, so I can bear it,
even if it is uncomfortable."

When it was taken out, it really was cake, and it felt as if it was quite
satisfied. Everyone who came into the kitchen and saw it, said--

"Oh, what a nice cake! How well your new flour has done!"

But just once, while it was cooling, it had a curious, disagreeable
feeling. It found, all at once, that the two boys, Lionel and Vivian,
had come quietly into the kitchen and stood near the table, looking at
the cake with their great eyes wide open and their little red mouths
open, too.

"Dear me," it said. "How nervous I feel--actually nervous. What great
eyes they have, and how they shine! and what are those sharp white
things in their mouths? I really don't like them to look at me in
that way. It seems like something personal. I wish the farmer's wife
would come."

Such a chill ran over it, that it was quite cool when the woman came in,
and she put it away in th