The children were tired, and stood panting. Sir Toady was unexpectedly pessimistic. Maid Margaret looked rather world-weary. Both had begun to think that, after all, there were better ways of spending five shillings than shooting for cocoa-nuts. "What rot!" said Sir Toady, shaking one disgustedly close to his ear. "Can't eat them all--make us ever so sick, and I have to join on Friday! No time to get better! Bah!" "It was all your fault, Toady," moaned the Maid, "_and_ I want my half-crown back!" "Nonsense!" cried Toady. "I never will go into partnership with a girl again. They always are sorry afterwards, whatever a chap does for them! There is your bag full of nuts, good and sound. What more do you want?" Maid Margaret wanted much more. She began to express her wants in terms of candies and chocolates. "Candies!" cried Mrs. Donnan; "why, if I weren't so busy, I would make you two candy to dream about--and of those very cocoa-nuts too!" "Do--oh, do make us some!" "Well, come into the bakehouse, and we shall see!" They went, Elizabeth Fortinbras and I smilingly assisting with the bags of nuts. Elizabeth could not be spared out of the front shop, but I stopped to watch, and of course Sir Toady and Maid Margaret pushed and elbowed for good front seats. Mrs. Donnan, quietly smiling as ever, seized a skewer, and with several skillful taps made a hole in the end of the nut through which she let the milk drop into a basin. Then with a heavy hammer she smashed the shell into pieces. It was a good nut, even as Sir Toady had prophesied. He had been well taught at the canteen. "Now," said the _cordon bleu_ of Edam, "who wants to do a bit of grating for me?" "_I_"--"_I_," shouted the children, and though I did not shout, I was really as ready as any one. The white inside was dealt out to us, and while the Maid and Sir Toady went at it (sometimes scraping their fingers by way of variety), a respectable pile of soft flaky nut, cream-colored and nice, began to appear. When we were finished, Mrs. Donnan went to a bag, and measured out two tablespoonfuls of white sugar to each one of the nut-flake, dropped the whole into a sizeable patty pan, and poured the milk of the cocoa-nut over it. With Mrs. Donnan stirring hard, the whole was soon bubbling away cheerfully--indeed, boiling like what lava does in a volcano (_ought to_, at any rate), the bubbles bursting, and the nice smell making your teeth water, so that it did not seem that you could ever wait for it to cool. Then, just when the bubbles began to burst with a warning "pop," Mrs. Donnan turned everything into a well-buttered shallow dish. It made a cake about as thick as your finger, and oh, but the smell was good! But she laid the dish away in the ice-house--as she said, to cool. Really, I think, to keep us from temptation, and prevent too early experimenting upon the result.