of the talk. But what
was I to do? I knew how to eat jumballs very well indeed, but how to
make them I knew no more than Mr Parmenter's eyeglass. She forgets,
does my Aunt Kezia, that I have lived all my life in Carlisle, where
Grandmamma would as soon have thought of my building a house as making
jumballs.

"Maria," said I, "my Aunt Kezia has sent me to make jumballs, and I
don't know how, not one bit!"

"Don't you, Miss Cary?" said Maria, laughing: "well, I reckon I do.
Half a pound of butter--will you weigh it yourself, Miss?--and the same
of white sugar, and a pound of flour, and three ounces of almonds, and
three eggs, and a little lemon peel--that's what you'll want." [Note
2.]

We were going about the buttery, as she spoke, gathering up and weighing
these things, and putting them together on the kitchen table. Then
Maria tied a big apron on me, which she said was Fanny's, and gave me a
little pan in which she bade me melt the butter. Then I had to beat the
sugar into it, and then came the hard part--breaking the eggs, for only
the yolks were wanted. I spoiled two, and then I said,--

"Maria, do break them for me! I shall never manage this business."

"Oh yes, you will, Miss Cary, in time," says she, cheerily. "It comes
hard at first, till you're used to it. Most things does. See now, you
pound them almonds--I have blanched 'em--and I'll put the eggs in."

So we put in the yolks of eggs, and the almonds, and the flour, and the
lemon peel, till it began to smell uncommon good, and then Maria showed
me how to make coiled-up snakes of it on the baking-tin, as jumballs
always are: and I washed my hands, and took off Fanny's apron, and went
back into the parlour.

I found there all whom I had left, and Hatty and Flora as well. When
tea came, and my jumballs with it, my Aunt Kezia says very calmly,--

"Pass me those jumballs, my dear, will you? Amelia won't want any; she
is an uncommon woman, and does not care what she eats. You may give me
some, because I am no better than other folks."

"O Aunt Kezia, but I like jumballs!" said Amelia.

"You do?" says my Aunt Kezia. "Well, but, my dear, they don't grow on
trees. Somebody has to make them, if they are to be eaten; and 'tis
quite as well we are not all uncommon women, or I fear there would be
none to eat.--Cary, you deserve a compliment, if you made these all by
yourself."

I hastened to explain that I deserved none at all, for Maria had he