Susie was out skipping her grapevine rope, and thinking what a nice day it was, when her mamma called to her: 

“Susie, don’t you want to help Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy make some Hot Cross Buns?”

“Of course,” the little rabbit girl said, and, being a very kind little creature, she added:  “Can Sammie help me, mamma?”

“Oh, I don’t want to,” said Sammie, who was playing marbles with Bully, the frog.  They were using old hickory nuts and acorns for their shooters and for the agates in the ring.  “I’m going to be a soldier or run an automobile when I grow up, so I don’t want to learn to cook.”

“Humph!  I guess soldiers and automobile men are glad enough to eat when some one else cooks for them,” said Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy.  “Anyhow, I can’t have you mussing around my kitchen, Sammie, so Susie is the only one who can help me make Hot Cross Buns.”

“Ask her if we can have the batter dishes and the one she mixes the frosting in, to clean out,” prosed Bully, in a whisper, and when Sammie asked the nurse, who was also a cook, she said: 

“Oh, I suppose so.  But don’t come around bothering while Susie and I are busy.  I’ll set the dishes out for you.”

Then Sammie and Bully felt very good, for it’s lots of fun to clean out the cake dishes when any one is baking, especially when Hot Cross Buns are being made.  So the little boy rabbit and the little frog, who was such a good jumper, played marbles under the trees in the big woods.

Then Susie and Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy went to work in the kitchen.  First they took some flour, milk, eggs, sugar and whatever else goes into Hot Cross Buns, and mixed them all up in a big dish.

“Oh, my!  How good that smells!” exclaimed Susie.  “Won’t Sammie and Bully be glad to get that?”

“Yes,” said the nurse-cook, “but now we must make the frosting to go on top, and I think I’ll mix in it some of the maple sugar that Uncle Wiggily boiled.”

“Oh, fine!” exclaimed Susie, and she clapped her two front paws together, she was so glad.

So she and Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy made a nice dish of maple-sugar frosting to go on top of the buns when they were baked.

“Now,” said the cook, after a little while, “we must get the pans ready to bake them in.  And, as we haven’t much room in the kitchen, we will just set the dish of dough and the frosting out on the window sill, where they won’t be in our way.  As soon as we have the tins greased we will make the buns and put them in the oven to bake.”

So the nice, sweet, good-smelling and good-tasting batter and the dish of maple-sugar frosting were set outside on the window sill.  Oh, how nice it smelled.  It’s a good thing that sly old fox wasn’t around, I tell you!

Well, after a while, Sammie and Bully got tired of playing marbles, and they walked around to the back of the underground house.  And what do you think?  If Bully didn’t see those dishes that had been set out on the window sill!  Yes indeed, he saw them!  Oh, he had sharp eyes, let me tell you!