ite if we found a stick of candy. S'pose we
go and look!"

"S'pose we do!" cried Mittie May.

CHAPTER IX

CANDY-MAKING

"If there's a pleasanter place than this in your village, I wish you'd
show it to me!" said Calvin Parks. "I declare, Mr. Cheeseman, it does me
good every time I come in here."

Mr. Cheeseman looked about him with contented eyes.

"It is pleasant," he said. "I'm glad you like it, friend Parks, for you
are one of the folks I like to see in it, and them isn't everybody."

Mr. Ivory Cheeseman certainly did look rather like a monkey, but such a
wise monkey! He was little and spare, with nothing profuse about him
save his white hair, which grew thick and close as a cap; his whole
aspect was dry and frosty, "like the right kind of winter mornin',"
Calvin Parks said when he described the old man to Mary Sands. The
kitchen in which he and Calvin were sitting was just behind the shop; a
low, dark room, with a little stove in the middle, glowing like a red
jewel, and waking dusky gleams in the pots and pans ranged along the
walls. They were not altogether ordinary pots and pans. Uncle Ivory, as
East Cyrus called him, was a collector in a modest way, and his bits of
copper, brass and pewter were dear to his heart. Lonzo, the village
"natural," found the gaiety of his life in polishing them, and receiving
pay in sugar-plums. He was at work now in a dim corner, chuckling to
himself as he scoured a huge old pewter dish.

[Illustration: MR. CHEESEMAN.]

The air was full of the warm, homely fragrance of molasses candy; a pot
of it was boiling on the stove, and from time to time Uncle Ivory
stirred it, lifted a spoonful, and watched the drip. On a table near by
other candies were cooling, peanut taffy, lemon drops, and great masses
of pink and white cream candy.

"Yes," said Calvin, pursuing his own thoughts. "This is another pleasant
home. Considerable many of 'em in these parts, or so it appears to a
lone person. I judge you're a single man, Mr. Cheeseman?"

"Widower!" said Mr. Cheeseman briefly.

"That so!" said Calvin.

They watched the molasses for a time, as it bubbled up in little
gold-brown mounds that flowed away in foam as the spoon touched them.

"She's killin' good to-day!" remarked the old man.

"Cream-o'-tartar?" asked Calvin.

"Yes! I never use any other. Yes, sir; I had a good wife, a real good
one; and might have had another, if I'd judged it convenient."

Calvin looked up