stove, all deliciously sticky and comfortable, lay Yassuh, fast asleep
and half melted; while little wisps of smoke curled out of the crack
between the oven and the door. The stove was almost as big as the tin
one Jimmy had given Sara for Christmas, but much more massive and
efficient-looking. On the table, looking so delicious that they made
your mouth water, were the ingredients with which Yassuh had been
working: a bubble-pitcher of milk-weed cream, a bowl of butterfly eggs
(the daintiest things!), a silver panful of flour from the best white
miller, and a large silk sack of snow-sugar from the Garden. Sara had
to put her hands behind her back.

"Yassuh!" shouted Pirlaps; and Sara had never before heard him speak
angrily. "The messy little rascal! I can't even kick him to wake him
up--I'd never get my foot out! Where are the tongs? Here, Sara, you
take the poker, and help me with him!"

So saying, Pirlaps picked the soft and sleeping Yassuh up gingerly
with the tongs, and Sara put the poker crosswise under the softest
part of him to keep him from pulling apart, and together they carried
him to the door and dropped him outside, where he made a
delicious-looking brown puddle on the silver snow.

"You stay and watch him till he hardens," called Pirlaps, hurrying
back toward the kitchen, "and don't let him go to sleep again. As soon
as he's hard enough, send him straight in here to me."

Sara stood on the doorstep watching Yassuh, who was now awake and
grinning, and she was very much interested to see how, as he hardened,
he wriggled himself back into shape, like a chrysalis that has just
shed its caterpillar skin. She was sure this was no new experience to