The soft yellow mixture did indeed look promising, but now came the time to fold in the whites of the eggs. "Fold in," repeated Nancy, somewhat puzzled. "How shall I fold it in?" She looked at the batter and she looked at the frothy egg whites. To fold that in would surely mean to spoil all the nice, white, snowy mound of froth. Nancy hated to do it, but she finally spilled it into the bowl full, and started to beat it all over again. The batter seemed rather thin and Nancy decided to add a little more flour. Just here was where her inexperience threatened disaster, but the trial so fascinated the little cook that she did a few other things not proposed by the recipe, but all of which seemed reasonable to her. The oven was now sizzling hot, and Nancy quickly turned her mixture into two tins, which she neglected to grease, and slipped them into the oven. With a sense of satisfaction she turned to and really cleared up all the utensils--something very commendable indeed in Nancy Brandon. With watching the clock and getting Ted's lunch set out on the little porch table, while she also managed somehow to start her own personal preparations for the afternoon, Nancy was, as she would say, kept on the jump. But the cake didn't burn, and she took it from the oven on the dot of thirty minutes. "It will have to cool, I suppose," Nancy guessed, "and while it's cooling I'll make the icing. It looks pretty good but it has got a lot of holes in it," was her rather skeptical criticism, as she inspected the two layers of golden pastry. But the cake, even after a thorough cooling which consumed more time than could be spared, would not leave the tins! Nancy tried a knife--that broke a great rough corner off. Then she got the pancake turner and slipped it under as well as she could, but alas! The thing actually splashed up in a regular explosion of crumbs! "Ruined!" groaned Nancy. "I can never fix that!" Her disappointment was cruel. To see a perfectly good and such a fragrant cake go to pieces when finished, after all the work of getting it that far was nothing short of a tragedy. Tears blinded Nancy Brandon. "I might have known," she sighed, "I just couldn't have such good luck with cooking." The rain was almost over. Ted would soon be in, but Nancy just couldn't help crying. It was so hard not to succeed when she had been counting so especially on that afternoon's fun. Perhaps she could get Ted to go to town for her after all. But upon serious consideration she decided against that plan. She simply wouldn't go now under any circumstances. Her eyes were red and she wanted a good cry even more than the fun of the sale. In fact, she couldn't help crying and she wasn't going to try.