Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/61

 morrow," mused Mrs. Bye. "The boarders'll have to eat it anyway, it must not be wasted."

"Oh, it looks purfickly good," replied Delight. "I'll see that they take it." She picked out a plump raisin from the pie and thoughtfully sucked it.

"How was it you came to pierce young Queenie's ears?" she repeated, when she had swallowed the raisin.

Mrs. Bye replied—"To cure her eyes. She had sore eyes."

"Poh eye," repeated Queenie, and she began to march up and down, singing—

"However did you do it?"

"Oh, I didn't do it. A neighbour—a Mrs. Bliss—did it. Her 'usband was the butcher—" Delight shuddered—"and she did it beautiful. You just pinches the lobe up a bit to stop the circulation, and then you holds a cork behind for to steady the ear against, then you sticks the needle threaded with a silk thread right through and ties the thread firmly. You have to turn the thread around in the wound every day to keep it from healing. Poor little Queenie did a bit of yelling then, but her eyes have been better ever since."

"Did it hurt very much, Queenie?" Delight asked of the child, as she drew up beside her mother's skirt.

"Ay," whined Queenie, "ih hurh."

Again Delight shuddered, but she was desperate. Her ears must be pierced that day so that they might have time to heal before the ball. She searched through the little plaid silk "housewife" in the shape of a bellows that her Granny had made for her on her twelfth birthday and