"Now, you go away. Go up to your room, or down to James. I don't want you standin' round lookin' as if you was goin' to bust every minute. You got to git used to this. I'm goin' to have a bakin' day once a week, same as I did for forty year." Drusilla spent a happy morning. The "fried cakes" finished, she decided to make some cookies--the "old-fashioned kind that my mother's sister Jane give me the receipt of; I kind o' want to see if I have lost my hand." But the hand had not lost its cunning if the great dish of brown, crisp doughnuts, and the cookies and the gingerbread were a test. After they were baked and in a row on the table, she stepped back and surveyed her handiwork, with a proud expression on her kindly old face. "Now if I only had some one to come in and say, 'Drusilla, is them fresh fried cakes?' and I'd laugh and say, 'Yes; do try 'em,' and they'd eat three or four. Or if I only had some neighbors--" Drusilla stopped suddenly. "Now, why _shouldn't_ I! I've got neighbors that's all been tryin' to be neighborly to me in their way; why shouldn't I be neighborly in _my_ way? I can't be neighborly jest leavin' a card, or drinkin' tea with my gloves on--Yes, I will! Drusilla'll be neighborly in _Drusilla's_ way." She was as delighted as a child at the thought. She hurried into the pantry and returned with some plates and napkins. She piled a few of her confections upon each plate, carefully covered it with a napkin, then called William. "William," she said, "you take that plate o' cookies over to Mis' Gale's, and tell her that I sent 'em, bein' it was my bakin' day. See she gets 'em and they don't stop in the kitchen. And take that plate o' gingerbread to Mis' Cairns; and them fried cakes to Mis' Freeman; and tell 'em all I sent 'em with my love. Tell 'em I made 'em myself." William looked at her but did not move. "What you lookin' at me fer? Take 'em as I said. Put 'em in a basket if you can't carry 'em, or have one of the girls help you." "But, ma'am, but--" "But what? Ain't you never took cookies to one before?" "Why--why--no, ma'am. Never in the houses where I've served--" "Now that'll do, William. Don't begin that. That's what James always says when he specially wants to be disagreeable. If you haven't ever took a neighbor a plate o' cookies or some gingerbread, right hot out of the oven, you've missed a lot. So do as I say!" "But--ma'am--I'm sure they have all the cakes they need. Mr. Cairns is a--very--very rich man, and they have a cook, a French cook. Why, he has an income of more than a million dollars a year, and--and--" Drusilla looked at him over her glasses.