One sunny afternoon, Candy the Girl had been doing her lessons, but she finished them just before lunch, and went off to play in the wood. She had quite a nice time there, and when she came back she asked her mother, “Could she go to the candy factory?” So her mother told her to put on her things, and run along there, before it was time for dinner.
Soon she arrived at her aunt, the Marchioness of Caramel’s. Now her aunt had been out that morning to buy some wool, to make a scarf for her husband, the sugar-plum fairy, because he often caught cold. So she managed to get some very beautiful India wool indeed, and was just in the middle of giving orders to her head man-of-all-work, Custard, when in popped Candy.
“Delighted to see you, darling,” said the Marchioness, “because Custard was just saying it would be such a nice idea to teach you how to make sweets, by way of a treat. So if you don’t mind, my pet, just wait a few minutes till he has finished his work.”
So in a few minutes, Custard, who had a long fork, and all sorts of other strange things in his hands, made a bow to his mistress and was off.
“Now, darling,” he said to Candy, “the first thing we do, you see, is to put some water in that cauldron over the fire.” So he took off his fork, and undid a lot of wrappings, and folded some water over to the cauldron.
“We must take care not to scald ourselves, always remember,” said Custard, “and never do so without your mother’s permission, because it makes you very red and sore, and generally cross and ill-tempered for days, which is really very tiresome for everyone, more especially for you, my pet.”
Then he took the big bunch of India wool, and doth’d the hot water all over with it, and it really looked exactly like a regular terny tubfull of white cabbage.
“Now the best thing to do with it,” he went on, “is to make candy-floss. But that takes such a long time to dry, we will only just do a little of it, for the fun of the thing, you know.”
Then he took it off the fire, and gave Candy some to hold in a wooden dish.
While he was doing this, the Marchioness, tacking over some prices, stopped now and then to take a look at what was going on.
Then Custard put the prepared wool to cool on his mistress’s pretty little dressing-table with the glass on it, because there was more sunlight to help it than in the other room, and the glass would keep it from being blown about.
Then they went into the other room, and watched it for a few minutes, and then they went back to the dressing-table.
“C’est le ton qui fait la musique,” said the Marchioness, and still the sweets wouldn’t dry.
“A-ha! here comes a regenerating breeze,” said Custard, entering the room from the garden with the hand organ of a street musician, who was singing “Roam, roam,” as if his “rent was waiting,” and swinging the flying detachment of the fire-party like a heavenly body about the same time.
Another minute, and all was over, the candy brushed to pieces into a dozen bits, and the fine India wool was nothing more than a burlap umbrella like the one you went to tea, I am happy to think, a dozen times last week under, while we ate Swiss cheese and drank egg flip.
Meanwhile Custard was turning round and round like a clock with his hand organ and looking at a guitar in the window; the Marchioness was shaking her handkerchief as well as she could, and Candy was just imagining how hot it was for the street musician after all, when pop! came the little door open and in rushed large numbers of mischievous young rascals.
They were pushed and pulled toward the dressing-table, wrapped themselves with it in the curtains of the open windows like a streamer, and conducted themselves in a really improper manner in every sort of way, without any sort of consideration for the music or for anyone in it.
“Whatever is to be done?” said the Marchioness, quite bewildered.
“I will go for the police on the other end of the street, quite a quarter of a mile from here,” said Custard, stopping the hand organ, bowing, and going up two minutes after to a collecting box in the wall, quite arrayed in brass knobs, in dimensions like the one you heard about long ago.
“Well, well, I never, I never,” said the Marchioness, after he was gone.