The moment his light vanished, Fanny bolted the door, saying spitefully, “Now we are safe from any more tricks. Let him thump and call, it only serves him right; and when the candy is done, we’ll let the rascal out.”
“How can we make it without molasses?” asked Polly, thinking that would settle the matter.
“There’s plenty in the store-room. No; you shan’t let him up till I’m ready. He’s got to learn that I’m not to be shaken by a little chit like him. Make your candy, and let him alone, or I’ll go and tell papa, and then Tom will get a lecture.”
Polly thought it wasn’t fair; but Maud clamoured for her candy, and finding she could do nothing to appease Fan, Polly devoted her mind to her cookery till the nuts were safely in, and a nice panful set in the yard to cool. A few bangs at the locked door, a few threats of vengeance from the prisoner, such as setting the house on fire, drinking up the wine, and smashing the jelly-pots, and then all was so quiet that the girls forgot him in the exciting crisis of their work.
“He can’t possibly get out anywhere, and as soon as we’ve cut up the candy, we’ll unbolt the door and run. Come and get a nice dish to put it in,” said Fan, when Polly proposed to go halves with Tom, lest he should come bursting in somehow, and seize the whole.
When they came down with the dish in which to set forth their treat, and opened the back-door to find it, imagine their dismay on discovering that it was gone—pan, candy, and all—utterly and mysteriously gone!
A general lament arose, when a careful rummage left no hope; for the fates had evidently decreed that candy was not to prosper on this unpropitious night.
“The hot pan has melted and sunk in the snow, perhaps,” said Fanny, digging into the drift where it was left.
“Those old cats have got it, I guess,” suggested Maud, too much overwhelmed by this second blow to howl as usual.
“The gate isn’t locked, and some beggar has stolen it. I hope it will do them good,” added Polly, returning from her exploring expedition.
“If Tom could get out, I should think he’d carried it off; but not being a rat, he can’t go through the bits of windows; so it wasn’t him,” said Fanny, disconsolately, for she began to think this double loss a punishment for letting angry passions rise.
“Let’s open the door and tell him about it,” proposed Polly.
“He’ll crow over us. No; we’ll open it and go to bed, and he can come out when he likes. Provoking boy! if he hadn’t plagued us so, we should have had a nice time.”
Unbolting the cellar-door, the girls announced to the invisible captive that they were through, and then departed much depressed. Half-way up the second flight, they all stopped as suddenly as if they had seen a ghost; for looking over the banisters was Tom’s face, crocky but triumphant, and in either hand a junk of candy, which he waved above them as he vanished, with the tantalizing remark, “Don’t you wish you had some?”
“How in the world did he get out?” cried Fanny, steadying herself after a start that nearly sent all three tumbling downstairs.
“Coal-hole!” answered a spectral voice from the gloom above.