“Oh-h-h-h-h,” Mart groaned, as he fought his way back into consciousness after a broken night’s sleep.

He cracked one eyelid and tried to get an idea of the time. Moments later, he sat up with a yelp.

“Ten fifty-three?” He threw back the covers and stumbled out of the bed. “I was supposed to be there by half-past nine!”

Minutes later, he rushed through the kitchen, stopping only to grab an apple and a banana from the fruit bowl on his way past. He snatched up his car keys, slammed the door behind himself and ran across Crabapple Farm’s yard to the place he’d parked his car roughly eight hours earlier.

“What? No!” He turned back to the house, muttering, “I don’t need this!”

He stomped through the house, yelling, “Trixie! You’ve got to move your car!”

“She isn’t here,” his mother informed him, both looking and sounding exasperated with him. “She, Honey and Diana are spending the day in New York City, remember? They won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Then why has she blocked me in?” he demanded. He shook his head. “I don’t have time for this. I’ll take her car, instead.”

Mart returned to the kitchen and switched his keys for Trixie’s, munching on the apple as he walked. As he reversed her car out of the place she had so carelessly parked, he glanced at the fuel gauge and saw that she only had a quarter-tank.

“I guess I’ll have to fill it up for her,” he muttered to himself as he turned out of their driveway and onto Glen Road.

A short drive later, he arrived at Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house. He left the apple core and banana peel on the console and got out.

“Where have you been?” Dan demanded of him, as he hurried over to where Dan and Jim were working. “And why are you driving that?”

Mart bit back the retort he wanted to make, instead explaining, “I slept through the alarm. And Trixie’s gone off somewhere and she left that in my way and I didn’t want to mess around getting my own car out when I was already late.”

“Well, if we need to go anywhere, I’m not going with you,” Dan answered, handing him a spade and leading the way to where the work was being done.

“How did you get here?” Mart glanced around and didn’t see another car.

They reached the trench being dug and Jim greeted Mart.

“Tom dropped us here right after he dropped the girls at the train station,” Jim explained. “Honey’s and my cars are being serviced today.”

Mart groaned. “Maybe I should have taken the time to switch cars.”

“Well, if we need to, I can go back with you and do it,” Jim offered. “I’m not threatened by a two-tone pink car, even if Dan is.”

“I’m not threatened by it,” Dan argued. “It just doesn’t fit my image.”

“That’s what you say,” Mart muttered, then asked, “Exactly where is this trench going?”

Dan pointed to the pipe at the bottom of the part they’d already dug. “Wherever that goes.”

The three, who were spending a few weeks at home at the beginning of the summer, had offered to help Mrs. Vanderpoel save some money, by doing the digging work for some plumbing she needed done.

“Okay, I’ll just go back and get my gloves out of the car…” Mart bit back a curse. “Scratch that. The gloves are in my car. Guess I’ll just have to do without.”

He got down into the trench and started digging.

Less than an hour later, a voice called to them, “How are you doing, boys?”

Mart stood up from his work and surveyed the progress they’d made.

“No sign of the collapsed section, yet,” Jim told her. “But the soil’s soft and it’s not as difficult as we’d imagined.”

She peered down into the hole with a heavy sigh. “That old pipe is in a sorry state, isn’t it? It’s probably long past time I had this work done. But enough of my troubles. Come in and cool down and have a bite of lunch.”

Lunch! Mart’s stomach growled in approval of that concept.

But Jim shook his head. “We’re all dirty, Mrs. Vanderpoel. We wouldn’t want to track all this inside.”

“Nonsense.” She led the way to the back door, where several buckets of water and a pile of old towels waited. “Wash up here, then just kick off your boots before you come inside and it will be fine. I’m not afraid of a little dirt.”

They obeyed the instruction and followed her inside, settling at the kitchen table, where the old lady had laid out huge mounds of sandwiches. Mart picked one up and bit into it with a satisfied moan. Before he had even finished the first sandwich, he selected a couple more.

“You’ve hardly done anything,” Dan grumbled at him. “How can you be that hungry already?”

“I skipped breakfast, I’ll have you know.” He rubbed absently at one of the blisters which had already formed. “If Brian had been at home, none of this would have happened.”

Jim raised an eyebrow. “It’s somehow Brian’s fault that you stayed out all night and overslept this morning?”

“It wasn’t all night.” Mart eyed the sandwiches, looking for his next target. “I was home before three. I meant that he wouldn’t have let me oversleep. I don’t even know why Moms did.”

Dan laughed. “To teach you a lesson, probably.”

“Yes, well. If I hadn’t overslept, then I wouldn’t have missed breakfast, or had to take Trixie’s car, or been late, or been missing my gloves.”

“Well, I hope that nothing else goes wrong,” Mrs. Vanderpoel told him, while passing the sandwiches around again. “It’s so good of you all to come and help me with this. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“We’re happy to help,” Jim answered.

“I wonder if one of you might do another favour for me.” Her already rosy cheeks turned a deeper shade. “My plumbing woes have driven other things out of my mind and I’m terribly sorry to say that I’ve somehow run out of cookies and I have no flour to make any more.”

Mart stuffed his latest sandwich into his mouth to muffle the cry of dismay which might possibly deafen them all if he let it out. This catastrophe had never been encountered before. Mrs. Vanderpoel always had a jar full of delicious cookies, ready for any visitors, expected or otherwise.

“Of course, we can pick up some flour for you,” Jim offered. “If you’ll write us a list, we can buy anything else you need at the same time.” He turned to Mart. “If you and I go, we can switch Trixie’s car with yours, drop by Lytell’s store, and be back in half an hour.”

Dan nodded. “And I’ll keep working on the trench.”

They polished off the sandwiches, showered Mrs. Vanderpoel with effusive thanks and embarked on that plan. A short time later, they arrived at Crabapple Farm and shuddered to a stop.

“Huh. Looks like Moms is out,” Mart commented, as he climbed out of Trixie’s car, patting his pockets for his keys. He stopped short. “Oh, no.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The house is locked and I don’t have my keys,” Mart explained. “How has this happened? There’s never no one here!”

Jim cast him a look. “No, there’s often no one here, but you’re just not here to see it. Because you’re not here, either.”

Mart clutched at his hair. “But my car keys are in there. And I am out here. And Dad insisted that it wasn’t safe to hide a key under a rock.”

“Well, we’ll just have to take Trixie’s car again.” Jim waved him back to the car. “Does it matter so much, really?”

“I suppose not.” Mart slammed the driver’s door behind himself in an attempt to work off some of his frustration. “Well, let’s get to the store and pick up these things.”

He turned the key, but nothing happened.

Jim leaned over to study the displays on Trixie’s dashboard and groaned. “We’re out of gas.”

“No, we’re not,” Mart argued, pointing to the needle on the gauge, which sat right on the quarter-full mark. “It must be something else. I told Trixie that this car wasn’t that cheap only because it’s painted like a Barbie doll nightmare. There must be something else wrong with it.”

“Yes,” Jim answered, “and that something is that the fuel gauge sticks.” He tapped the glass and the needle dropped down past the E. “If the car’s turned off and the needle is at quarter-full, it means it’s stuck.”

“Well, where are we going to get another car?” Mart wondered. “Is there one at Manor House we can borrow?”

Jim shook his head. “Tom’s driving all over the place today. And all of the other cars are being serviced. We chose today for that specially, because no one was going to be home except me and a couple of the staff.”

“Regan has a truck,” Mart offered.

“And he’s in it,” Jim replied. “A long way from here.”

Mart grunted in disgust. “Fine. Then we’ll have to take bicycles. You can have Brian’s.”

They pulled out the two bikes and dusted off a few cobwebs. Jim gave each of them a once-over, while Mart pumped up the tyres.

Once Jim was satisfied that everything was in working order, they set off on the short ride to the store. Mart’s spirits lifted as they flew along the path. It had been far too long since he’d done this.

It all came crashing down, quite literally, after the last bend in the bike track, where a small tree had fallen over the path. Mart let out a yell as he tumbled over the handlebars and into a rather prickly bush. Jim yelled, too, as he struggled to stop. He lost his balance and fell onto the path.

“Are you okay?” he asked, as he struggled to his feet and began dusting himself off.

Mart groaned a bit. “Help me out of this bush and I’ll tell you then.”

Jim’s strong arms pulled him back out and they each surveyed the damage to themselves and the bikes.

“Well, I think I’m unharmed, except for a scrape or two, but neither of us is riding anywhere,” Jim noted, a short time later. “Are you hurt?”

Turning his arm around, Mart displayed a long scratch from a twig, a grazed elbow and a few drops of blood. “I’ve been better,” he quipped. “But I’ve been worse, too. I don’t think anything is broken or sprained.”

“It’s not far, now.” Jim pointed down the path. “We can walk to Lytell’s from here. And it’s only about a mile back to Mrs. V.’s.”

“It’s a mile from home,” Mart corrected. “It’s further from here.”

“Well, we’re not going to get there by just standing here,” Jim pointed out. “We’ll come back and get the bikes later, I guess, when we’ve got a car to carry them in.”

Mart nodded and they set off. Before they’d gotten five steps it became clear that he was more hurt than he’d initially thought.

“You’re limping.”

He nodded again. “It may not be sprained, but I think something in my leg is a bit strained..” He grunted. “I’ll just walk it off.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.” He waved a hand. “See? We’re practically there already.”

The bell jingled as they entered Lytell’s store and the old man shuffled out of the back room to see who had entered.

“Afternoon,” he greeted, just a little grudgingly.

The two young men returned the greeting and began assembling Mrs. Vanderpoel’s order.

“This might be a little harder than I thought,” Jim noted, as he compared the list of items to the goods on display

“Anything I can help you two with?” Mr. Lytell asked, coming up beside them as they tried to decide which kind of flour their friend needed.

Jim handed him the list and Mart took the opportunity to check the freezer for something he could use as an ice pack. He selected a bag of frozen peas and applied it to his leg, letting out a soft sigh of relief as the coldness began to ease the burning ache.

“Now, what do you think you’re doing with that?” Lytell asked, rounding the end of the aisle and seeing what Mart was doing with his nice, clean stock.

“I’m going to pay for them,” Mart promised, putting his hand into his pocket to pull out his wallet.

It wasn’t there.

“I mean, I will pay you. When I can get back in the house to get some money.”

Mr. Lytell snatched the peas away from him. “What do you mean, coming in here without any money?”

“I’ve got money,” Jim put in. “And, even if neither of us did, I can charge things to the Manor House account. You know that you’ll receive the money promptly.”

“Hmm,” the old man grumbled. “That’s as may be, but what are you doing, making a mess of my store? Just look at this floor!”

Mart looked, but for a moment saw nothing. Then he noticed a single drop of blood.

“Sorry.” He checked over himself, looking for where it might have come from and found a wound he hadn’t noticed on his other arm. “I’ll clean that right up for you.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Stand right where you are and don’t move. I can’t have you bleeding all over the place like this.” He shook his head. “As bad as your sister. Harum scarum, both of you.”

The old man pushed past him to get to the room behind the counter where the cleaning supplies were. Their elbows jostled as he passed and Mart began to lose his balance. His arms swung out, one hand catching against a pile of cans on one side. As they fell, his sore leg gave out beneath him and he tumbled into the shelves on the opposite side of the aisle.

The top shelf collapsed with a deafening crash, bringing down the one below it and then the bottom shelf in a chain reaction of destruction. Boxes, cans and bags of food bounced, rolled and burst everywhere.

As the last can rolled to a stop against the storekeeper’s foot, Mart lay amid the wreckage, holding his breath. The silence did not last.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Lytell ranted, turning purple in the face. “Just look! That’s hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage that I can’t afford to bear. Not to mention hours of cleaning and repairs!”

“We’ll pay for the damage,” Jim interrupted, as Mart just lay there, stunned. “Just send an account to Miss Trask and she’ll take care of it. And we’ll help you clean up, too, of course. Just tell us what you want done and we’ll take care of it.”

“You can take yourselves right out of that door,” Lytell ordered. “Now! And don’t let me see you here again!”

“Well, if you don’t want our help, how about someone from the staff?” Jim offered. “I’ll call in at the house and arrange for one of the maids to come down.”

“No! I said, out!”

“A professional cleaner?” Jim suggested.

“Out! Out! Out! Out! OUT!” the old man bellowed, bouncing on his heels with each repetition. “How many times do I have to say it?”

Jim turned to Mart. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Mart grunted.

Lytell made a noise like an angry bull. “That’s the last straw! No one from either of your families can ever shop here again. Do you hear me?”

Toeing aside a can or two, Jim ignored the angry storekeeper and knelt down next to his friend. “Can you get up?”

Mart let out another groan and, with Jim’s help, sat up. He began feeling for further injuries.

“I think I’m okay, but I’m going to be bruised all over.” He clambered to his feet and tested wrists and ankles. “Okay. I think I can still walk.”

“Yes! Out that door,” Lytell repeated. “I’m telling you both to go.”

“We heard you. And we’re working on it,” Jim answered, with just a hint that the edge of his temper approached. “Just give us a couple of minutes.”

“I’ll give you each a clip around the ear!”

Jim turned on him, face reddening. “Now, listen here–”

“Time to go, Jim,” Mart interrupted. “I’m fine, see? And I’m sure Miss Trask can sort everything out.”

His friend glowered for a moment, chest heaving as he struggled to get his temper back under control. The battle won, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He slid out a twenty-dollar bill and dropped it on the counter. Then, he reached out and snatched the bag of peas still clutched in the storekeeper’s hand.

“We’ll need this,” he told him. “And you can’t sell it, anyway, after what it’s been through.”

He stalked out of the store, almost dragging Mart along behind him. The bells jingled cheerfully as the door closed behind them and Jim let out a choice word or two.

“He doesn’t need to tell us not to shop there again,” Jim declared. “None of our family or friends will set foot in there again, if I have anything to say about it.”

Mart kept his silence until they had walked, or in his case limped, a little further away. Once he was sure they were out of earshot, he found a fallen log to sit down on and let his head fall into his hands.

“Are you okay?” Jim asked, bending over him in concern.

“Okay?” Mart asked, the urge to laugh finally overcoming his attempts to make it stop. “I don’t know who the bigger fool was in that situation, him or me. But when you consider that your family and mine are some of his best customers, I’m pretty sure it’s him.”

Jim’s shoulders relaxed, as he let go of the last of his temper. “Still, you did look pretty funny down there.”

“Thanks a lot.” He snatched the bag of peas from Jim and pressed it to his leg. “So, what are we going to do now? We didn’t get the flour.”

“Let’s go to Manor House,” Jim suggested, after a moment’s thought. “Cook might have some spare flour. And, if we’re lucky, Tom might be there and have a few minutes to drop us back to Mrs. V.’s.”

“Sounds good.” Mart groaned as he got to his feet. He settled the bag of peas against his arm instead. “Let’s move.”

They made slow progress. Even beneath the trees, the heat beat down on them. Mart’s face began to sweat. He raised a hand to touch his cheek.

“Are you sunburnt?” Jim asked, suddenly.

Mart groaned. “Probably. And I’m thirsty. Why didn’t we think to bring some water with us?”

“It was supposed to be a short drive, not a long walk,” Jim pointed out.

They trudged along the path, with Mart’s steps getting slower and slower.

“Nearly there,” Jim encouraged, as Manor House came into view a little further up the hill.

Mart nodded and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Reaching the house at last, Jim led him into the kitchen and poured him a glass of water.

“Drink,” he ordered. “And sit down, before you fall down.”

Mart was only too happy to comply. By the time he’d almost finished his third glass, Jim had arranged for Margery Trask to settle things with Mr. Lytell, collected all of the things they had intended to buy out of the pantry, with Cook’s blessing, and ascertained that there were still no cars available. Cook had fussed around and administered some first aid.

“We’ll get a taxi,” Jim decided. “Because you really can’t walk that far.”

“Unless Moms has gotten home?” Mart suggested.

He waited while Jim tried to call the farm, but there was no answer. Jim ordered the taxi.

“They’ll be here in about five minutes.” Jim gestured to his glass. “Do you need some more, or can we go out to the verandah to wait?”

Mart downed the last mouthful and set the glass beside the sink. “Let’s move.”

“Or hobble?” Jim shook his head as Mart lurched across the kitchen. “You’re going to be pretty sore tomorrow, I think.”

“I’m pretty sore now.”

They settled on the verandah, but only enjoyed the breeze there for a minute or two before their taxi arrived. The short ride passed quickly and soon they were rejoining Dan.

“Half an hour!” Dan complained, as he heaved himself out of a second trench. “You call that half an hour?”

“Lots of things went wrong. But what’s going on?” Jim asked, in dismay. “Why are you digging over there?”

“It’s the wrong pipe.” He waved at the end further from the house. “When I got to that part, I thought it looked wrong, so I called the plumber and talked to him. This is a disused water pipe. The one we’re supposed to be digging up is the sewer pipe. And it’s over there. Where I’m digging now.”

Jim only groaned.

“Hey, what’s wrong with Mart? He looks like someone beat him up and painted him red.”

Mart tried to pull a face at his friend, but it hurt.

“I’ll tell you all about it while we get back to work,” Jim offered. “I think Mart had better go and help out inside.”

Taking the supplies from him, Mart entered the house with as much dignity as he could muster. As he explained to Mrs. Vanderpoel just why it was that her flour had arrived in a canister and not a paper packet, he tried to ignore Dan’s hoots of laughter.

“Well, I thank you very much for the trouble you’ve gone to,” the old lady told him. “Now, we’ll need to get started on these cookies if we want them ready for my hungry workers.”

She began arranging ingredients and equipment. The wooden moulds for the windmill cookies already lay ready on the table and Mart looked at them with interest.

“I suppose these have been in your family for generations,” he commented. “It’s an old family recipe, isn’t it?”

She looked up from measuring the flour. “I’ll let you in on the secret, if you like.”

“You mean it’s not an old family recipe?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly. Not my family. And these are not my family’s moulds, or my husband’s family’s.” She crossed to a drawer. “Here are the old ones. They’re not so special, are they? But I keep them out of sentiment.”

“They’re simpler,” Mart noticed, as he ran his fingers over the aged wood. “Not as symmetrical.”

“A bit more amateurish,” she agreed. “Brom made me this new set, though even they are more than fifty years old, now.”

“And what about the recipe?” Mart prompted, as she began to mix the dough.

“My own family’s recipe is lost, long ago,” she explained. “My mother died quite young, you see, and it had never been written down. Because I didn’t know it by heart, I never could get it quite the same.” She sighed. “No, that’s putting it too mildly. I never could get them to come together at all. I always ended with piles of crumbs that tasted wrong.”

“So, how did you learn? Did you get this recipe from a book?”

She laughed. “Oh, no. Not in those days. My mother-in-law took me in hand in the weeks leading up to our wedding and made sure that I knew how to cook all of the things that my husband would like to eat. After the wedding, he set me straight on several things, but that’s another story altogether.”

“So, she taught you to make these?”

The old lady nodded. “I spend hours and hours making and re-making them until she was satisfied that I would always remember how it was done.”

She patted the ball of dough. “Now, this needs to rest a little while. And I think we could both do with a cup of tea while we wait.”

As she bustled around making it, Mart examined the moulds once more.

“Have you written down the recipe?” he asked, as she set a tea cup down in front of him.

She shook her head, with a slightly guilty expression.

“May I?”

For a moment, he thought she would refuse. Then, she nodded. “That sounds like a very good idea.”

As they sipped their tea, Mart made careful note of the ingredients list and all of the steps she had taken thus far.

“And now that we’re finished,” she added, as she took the empty cups away, “we’ll form the cookies. I usually leave them a little longer than that, but they will still be good.”

She checked that the oven was ready, laid out the trays and then set about teaching Mart to use the moulds to make the windmill shapes. His first few efforts looked a little wonky, but he soon got the hang of it.

Once the trays slid into the oven, he got on with writing out the rest of the recipe.

“When I take them out, you can go and fetch your friends to clean up,” she directed. “I imagine they’ll be tired and hungry and very dirty, by now.”

The kitchen already smelt deliciously fragrant and Mart’s mouth was watering. But when she opened the oven, he stopped to take an appreciative sniff. The sweet, spicy aroma almost overwhelmed his senses. Mindful of the luck he’d already had today, he kept well out of the way and the cookies made it to the cooling rack unharmed.

He stepped outside and an altogether different smell assaulted his nose.

“Phew! What’s that?”

Dan stood a short distance away, scowling. “It’s crap.”

Jim cleared his throat. “I think the correct term for it is waste-water.”

“Ah. So you found the right place.”

“We found it, all right.” Dan tossed down his spade and stalked a short distance away. “And now, maybe, you can finish the job for us, instead of lazing around eating cookies.”

“Hey! I haven’t eaten a single one!” Mart objected. “And I came out here to tell you to clean up so you can have some.”

“There’s not enough water in the world to get me clean enough for that,” Dan snapped. “I’ve had it. I’m going.”

The other two watched as he strode away.

“What, exactly, just happened?” Mart asked, after their friend had left their sight.

“Well, we found the collapsed section and we were being careful with the contaminated soil, but about ten seconds before you arrived, Dan stood on the pipe and it broke under his feet. I didn’t get the worst of it, but I think I’m going to stay outside,” Jim decided. “If you can bring me a cookie or two, I’ll eat them on the other side of the house, which hopefully smells better that it does here.”

Mart nodded and went off to arrange that.

“Dan had to go home,” he told Mrs. Vanderpoel. “But Jim will happily sample your efforts.”

“Oh, dear. I’ll need to pack some up for him,” she fussed. “I’m so very grateful for all you boys have done. And I’m so very sorry about leading you all astray as to where the hole needed to be dug.”

“They’ve found the right place, now.”

They took the refreshments outside for Jim, meeting him on the opposite side of the house as he had suggested. But before Mart had a moment to sample a cookie for himself, he heard his name being called.

“Moms!” he answered. “What are you doing here?”

“Where are Trixie’s car keys?” she asked. “And why is her car at home, when you’re here?”

He let out a groan. “It’s out of gas. I’d forgotten about that.”

He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the keys, holding them out to her.

“Oh, no you don’t.” His mother took hold of his arm and began leading him away. “You’re coming with me.”

He cast an agonised glance at the plate of cookies.

“I’ll take care of everything here,” Jim promised, grinning. “And I’ll pick up the bikes, too.”

Mrs. Vanderpoel called out her thanks and the two departed in Helen’s car.

“What have I done wrong, now?” Mart asked, as they drove.

“Why were you limping?” she asked, in return. “And are you sun-burnt? And what have you done to your arm?”

“It’s a long story,” he answered. “But the short version is that every possible thing that could go wrong today, has.”

“So, you probably don’t want to deal with the insect infestation in Trixie’s car, caused by your fruit scraps?”

He groaned again, this time much more loudly. “I don’t want to, but of course I’ll do it. Everything, today, has been my fault.” He thought about that for a moment, then corrected, “At least, most things. It wasn’t totally my fault that everything fell down in Lytell’s store, because he did push me. And it wasn’t my fault that Jim and Dan were digging in the wrong place, though if I’d been on time we would have found out a lot sooner. It wasn’t my fault there was a tree down over the path, or that I didn’t see it in time to stop without coming off my bike. I don’t think it was my fault that Mrs. V had run out of flour. But for just about everything else, I’m to blame.”

“It sounds like you’ve had an eventful day,” his mother observed, as she pulled up in their driveway. “I’ll call your father and see if he can bring home a gas can. And I’ll help you clean out Trixie’s car.”

“Thanks, Moms.” He frowned. “I wrote out Mrs. V.’s recipe for windmill cookies, but I’ve left it at her house. I helped her make them and I didn’t even get to try one.”

“That, too, is easily fixed,” she assured him. “But open that car, first, and we’ll deal with one problem at a time.”

The banana peel had turned black and the apple core brown, after their day in a locked car in the sun. Tiny flying insects flitted around them. Mart screwed up his nose at the rather unpleasant smell, but grabbed the offending items. His mother handed him a cleaning cloth and he soon had the car back to nearly the state he had found it in.

Then, as Mart rested his aching body, Helen smoothed out the rest of his difficulties for him, though she insisted that he wait to eat his cookie until after dinner.

He had it poised under his nose, so that he could appreciate its delectable scent, when a faint sound from elsewhere in the house came to his attention.

“That sounds like your alarm, Mart,” his father noted.

Mart glanced at the time and groaned. “I didn’t sleep through the alarm; I set it twelve hours late.”

The cookie in his hand broke into pieces.

The End

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