HOW NED TOODLES WENT TO COOKING SCHOOL
“NO, you must not touch that! No, nor that either. Now mind what I’m saying, and oh, do keep away from that sugar-box! Ned Toodles, how can you act so? I’ll never get this dinner ready if you don’t keep out of my way, and stop trying to steal things. I’m ashamed of you!” and Denise caught up her rolling-pin, which lay upon the small pastry board, and drove off the little scamp who was causing all her troubles. And I am sure you will never guess what that little scamp was, so I will tell you that it was a small Welsh pony.
You will wonder what a pony was doing in a kitchen, so I will tell you that this was a most unusual kitchen. It was a tiny one, in the playhouse which this little girl’s father had had built for her in the pretty grounds of her home, and was fitted up in the most perfect manner with everything a real kitchen ever has. The house had a dining room too, and upstairs a bedroom and sitting room for the dollies.
That was one half of it; the other was the dearest little stable in the world, and in it lived Ned Toodles, her pony; Tan, her big goat; and Sailor, her Newfoundland dog.
There, too, were kept Ned’s and Tan’s carriages, harness, etc.
A door led into it from the playhouse, and her pets could come visiting whenever they wished, for they were never tied up, and were too wise to run off.
Denise’s mamma had taught her how to cook many things and she spent hours making all sorts of dainties, and when they were made she would set her table and Ned, Tan, Sailor, and Beauty Buttons, the black-and-tan, would all take their places, standing up, and have a grand feast.
They dearly loved to come into the kitchen while she cooked, and she had some lively times trying to keep them out of mischief.
The morning of which I am telling she was preparing a grand luncheon, and the pets had all been invited, but were not to come till luncheon was served. They kept sniffing at the closed door, however, and doing all they could to push it open, for they smelt the apple pies which were baking, and their mouths fairly watered.
Denise, enveloped in a gingham apron, with a cooking cap set rakishly upon her curly pate, was flying around, trying to get all ready before her guests arrived. She had just set her pies to cool, and was making griddle cakes, of which one must have eaten about a hundred before being satisfied, to judge by their size, when the door leading out of the kitchen was pushed open and in walked Ned. He had found a way.
“Oh, dear!” she cried, “now you will lead me a life of it till you get your luncheon, won’t you?”
True enough. To steal an apple from the basket beside the table was only a second’s work, and that gone he turned his attention to the pies. Denise flew after him and rescued first the pies and then the little plate of toast, and at last caught up her rolling-pin and drove him off with that.
He gave a defiant bounce and ran into the dining room.
“Well, do go in there!” she cried; “there isn’t a single thing on the table to eat yet, unless you eat the plates, and I don’t believe even you will want those,” and she put the sugar-box and everything else out of sight. Then, placing her viands upon her tiny tray, she carried them into the dining room, meanwhile keeping one eye on Ned.
But more than one eye was required to watch that little black imp, as Denise soon found, for he bobbed about like a monkey, and behaved in altogether a disgraceful manner for an invited guest. At last she became indignant and said:
“I should think you’d be ashamed of yourself to act so! You’ve just got to wait till it is served, and then you may all come, and——oh, dear! here they all come this minute, and it’s all because you would come before the time you were told to,” and the distracted little hostess looked nearly desperate as three more of her four-footed guests appeared before the hours named in their invitations.
“Sailor, charge!” “Beauty, lie down at once!” and “Tan, come here!” were the orders quickly issued, “and you,” turning to Ned, with a look calculated to strike terror to his heart, “go straight back to the kitchen! You are not fit to come to the table, and there isn’t a single thing left in there for you to eat.”
But alas! she had entirely forgotten the Saratoga potatoes, which were still merrily sizzling in the tiny frying-pan.
With a final defiant jump Ned skipped through the door, and, literally “following his nose,” made straight for the little stove.
To make a dive for the potatoes, whose tempting odor had proved too much for him, was only a second’s work, and then came the climax.
A squeal, a wild leap, and the hot morsel was dropped as the scamp flew across the kitchen and out of the door, upsetting the cooking-table and everything else in his way, to rush across the lawn as though pursued by a wild beast.
With Tan and the dogs close upon her heels, Denise rushed into the kitchen and beheld the wreck.
One glance at the frying-pan, now calmly reposing in the middle of the floor, explained all.
And I wish to add that ever after Ned stood in very wholesome awe of that little stove, and would walk a long way around the kitchen in order to avoid going near it.