The white heap was lifting straight up in the air.
“Glory be!” shouted Alex. “If it isn’t rising yet. Lookout, or it will push the roof off the cabin! Look at it! Look at it rise!”
The dough continued to move. It shunted this way and that, then actually sprang toward the boy, who leaped back in amazement.
“It is chasing him!” chuckled Alex. “The white ghost of the bread that never was is chasing Case! Oh, hold me, some one! He’d have made bread before if he had known how easy it was! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
The next moment it _was_ chasing Case! Teddy, struggling under the sticky stuff, got to his feet and moved toward the door, trailing dough after himself in great stringy masses.
Case sat down on the edge of the table and roared. Clay hastened outside to have his laugh out, and Alex just rolled on the floor, connecting with the dough in more places than one and looking, when he arose, like a baker who had slept in his mixing trough.
“I told you to put a little yeast in!” cried Alex. “I guess you did it, all right. Now, you’ll have a time giving Teddy a bath I Why not put him in the oven and bake him? We’ll have lots of bread now! Wow! Wow!”
Case chased Alex out of the cabin and set to work cleaning the bear. It was a thankless task, for Teddy resented his efforts, and seemed to be complaining that a cub couldn’t even go to sleep under the electric stove without having his fine bearskin coat all mussed up!
After the boy had done his best Alex turned in and assisted in the further work of preparing what dough was left for the oven. He chuckled to himself all the evening, and talked knowingly to Teddy when that abused little bear came to him for sympathy.
“When you see a printer making bread,” he instructed the bear, as he washed flour and yeast out of his eyes, “you want to climb a tree. Case means well, but he knows about as much of the manufacture of bread as you do of the Federal constitution! Next time you see him melting up yeast, you take to the woods. It will be safer there!”
But, in spite of this sarcasm, Case stuck to his job until the bread was baking under the granite iron pail on the heater. As luck would have it, his efforts proved successful, and the lads had hot bread and butter before they went to bed.