Hedi and Jorma were in their little house. The children could see everything and everybody, but nobody could see them. Still—the sun peeped at them with one eye. Shining at the white-studded bushes the sun made them give off a strong sweet smell and stained the air green.

Hedi clenched her fist, compressing the fingers with all her might and cutting a grimace. She explained:

"The air is very thin, it is everywhere. I'm pressing my fingers tight together, but still there is air in my fist."

Hedi stretched her fingers and the air was really there on her palm. Jorma pressed his thumb against the tip of his forefinger, with all his power.

"Is there any air between my thumb and finger now?" he asked.

"Yes, there is," said Hedi. "The air is very, very thin."

It beat Jorma how a thing could be so very-very thin.

At that moment there came a whiff of different air from the kitchen carrying the smell of pancakes to the children's hiding-place.

"Mummy's making pancakes already!" Hedi said.

"I want some pancakes," said Jorma.

"I'll go and ask Mummy to give us two pancakes," offered Hedi. "So we can sit here and eat them and talk. Okay? But don't you leave the place meanwhile the way you did on the beach. It would make Mummy unhappy again."

"No, I won't," Jorma promised. He didn't want his Mother to be unhappy again because of him. He wouldn't have cared if Father had been unhappy, just a bit, but he never was or would be anyway.

In the kitchen Mother put two pancakes on a blue saucer and sprinkled them with sugar. Hedi walked out holding the saucer carefully with both hands.

On the porch Hedi was met by Ints walking with his tail up.

"Miaow!" said Ints, rubbed himself against her feet and started purring.

"Go and ask Mummy," Hedi advised Ints. "I've got only two pancakes."

But Ints either couldn't or wouldn't understand Hedi. He followed the girl with a loud purr, at times blocking her way.

Jorma was growing impatient.

"Which is mine?" he wanted to know when Hedi sat down by his side.

"This one," Hedi pointed to the pancake which had one more pancake, very small, at its side.

Then the children settled down to eat their pancakes, but Ints squeezed himself between the two, miaowing immodestly and pawing at their golden pancakes.

"I'll go and ask for a cake for Ints too," said Hedi. "Then he'll leave us alone. I'm leaving the pancakes in your care."

Hedi handed the blue saucer with two pancakes to her brother and, pushing Ints ahead of her, crept out of the shrubs.

Mother didn't put Ints's pancake on a saucer, she just rolled it up and gave it to Hedi.

"Is it too hot?" she asked.

The pancake was hot indeed, but Hedi had no patience to wait until it cooled, therefore she said,

"No, it's not too hot."

"Tear it into little bits," Mother said. "So it cools sooner. The cat won't eat hot food."

Hedi hurried out into the yard where Ints was waiting for her by the porch, tore a bit off the pancake and threw it on the grass.

Ints snatched the bit but spat it out at once, tried to nibble at it with one half of his mouth—while the whiskers on the other half bristled—and finally ate up the whole of the piece with a contented purr.

Hedi found it very amusing, the way Ints raised his whiskers, spat and pawed at the piece of pancake. She didn't tear the whole of the pancake into pieces at once, she fed it to the cat bit by bit.

"I must show Jorma how Ints eats pancake," she thought to herself.

Jorma felt pins and needles in his legs: he had been squatting for ages now.

"What on earth is Hedi doing there so long?" he wondered. "The pancakes are getting cool, and they won't taste half as good as when they're hot."

Time passed and there was no sign of Hedi, so Jorma decided to begin to eat his pancake. It was just the right thing—warm and delicious. Only the size wasn't right: it ought to have been twice as large as it was.

Jorma examined the remaining pancake and suddenly he realized what an awful mistake he had made: he had eaten Hedi's pancake! The one that was left was his own. Jorma knew it for certain: it had one more pancake, the size of his fingertip, attached to it.

How on earth could such a mistake happen! Surely Hedi had placed the saucer on his palm in a wrong way, so that her pancake came to lie on his side of the saucer. There could be no other explanation to it.

"Yet I'll be the scapegoat," Jorma reflected sadly.

It was a gloomy prospect. And out of pity for himself, just to cheer himself up, he finished his own pancake too. As he was licking his fingers a second time Hedi appeared.

"Hey, Jorma! I'll show you the way Ints eats a pancake!" she said sitting down by her brother. But as her eyes fell on the empty blue saucer she asked with a fright,

"Where are the pancakes?"

Jorma explained to her what a mad thing had happened to the pancakes—a mad thing. As he had feared Hedi's lips began quivering at the very start of his story and when he finished his sister said in a hurt voice,

"Oh, Jorma what a wicked boy you are! More wicked than I could ever believe! I won't have anything to do with a boy like you!" And she went away.

"Now she'll go in, remain standing by the door and stand quietly until Mother asks what's the matter with her. Then she'll tell Mother that Jorma's a wicked boy, he's eaten up her pancake." Jorma was fully able to foretell the course of events. And so it was. As he followed his sister to the kitchen he could hear her uttering the hard words,

"Jorma's really wicked sometimes, he's eaten up my pancake."

"But no, I'm not a wicked boy," Jorma protested. He was ready to explain to his Mother how it all had happened, but then he saw that Mother's face went stiff.

When Mother's face went stiff there was no sense in trying to explain things.

Jorma sidled back to the hail and out into the yard quietly.

Jason Ladock

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