I just grow cold when I think of my layer cake.
Oh, Diana, what if it shouldn’t be good!
I dreamed last night that I was chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a head.”
“It’ll be good, all right,” assured Diana, who was a very comfortable sort of friend.
“I’m sure that piece of the one you made that we had for lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly elegant.”
“Yes; but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good,” sighed Anne, setting a particularly well-balsamed twig afloat.
“However, I suppose I shall just have to trust to Providence and be careful to put in the flour.
Oh, look, Diana, what a lovely rainbow!
Do you suppose the dryad will come out after we go away and take it for a scarf?”
“You know there is no such thing as a dryad,” said Diana.
Diana’s mother had found out about the Haunted Wood and had been decidedly angry over it.
As a result Diana had abstained from any further imitative flights of imagination and did not think it prudent to cultivate a spirit of belief even in harmless dryads.
“But it’s so easy to imagine there is,” said Anne.
“Every night before I go to bed, I look out of my window and wonder if the dryad is really sitting here, combing her locks with the spring for a mirror.
Sometimes I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning.
Oh, Diana, don’t give up your faith in the dryad!”
Wednesday morning came.
Anne got up at sunrise because she was too excited to sleep.
She had caught a severe cold in the head by reason of her dabbling in the spring on the preceding evening; but nothing short of absolute pneumonia could have quenched her interest in culinary matters that morning.
After breakfast she proceeded to make her cake. When she finally shut the oven door upon it she drew a long breath.
“I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything this time, Marilla.
But do you think it will rise?
Just suppose perhaps the baking powder isn’t good?
I used it out of the new can.
And Mrs. Lynde says you can never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated.
Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought to take the matter up, but she says we’ll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it.
Marilla, what if that cake doesn’t rise?”
“We’ll have plenty without it” was Marilla’s unimpassioned way of looking at the subject.
The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as golden foam.
Anne, flushed with delight, clapped it together with layers of ruby jelly and, in imagination, saw Mrs. Allan eating it and possibly asking for another piece!
“You’ll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla,” she said.
“Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?”
“I think that’s all nonsense,” sniffed Marilla.
“In my opinion it’s the eatables that matter and not flummery decorations.”
“Mrs. Barry had her table decorated,” said Anne, who was not entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, “and the minister paid her an elegant compliment.
He said it was a feast for the eye as well as the palate.”
“Well, do as you like,” said Marilla, who was quite determined not to be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else.
“Only mind you leave enough room for the dishes and the food.”
Anne laid herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that should leave Mrs. Barry’s nowhere.
Having abundance of roses and ferns and a very artistic taste of her own, she made that tea table such a thing of beauty that when the minister and his wife sat down to it they exclaimed in chorus over it loveliness.
“It’s Anne’s doings,” said Marilla, grimly just; and Anne felt that Mrs. Allan’s approving smile was almost too much happiness for this world.
Matthew was there, having been inveigled into the party only goodness and Anne knew how.
He had been in such a state of shyness and nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair, but Anne took him in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly.
He never said a word to Mrs. Allan, but that perhaps was not to be expected.
All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne’s layer cake was passed.
Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering variety, declined it.
But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on Anne’s face, said smilingly:
“Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan.
Anne made it on purpose for you.”
“In that case I must sample it,” laughed Mrs. Allan, helping herself to a plump triangle, as did also the minister and Marilla.