Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/434

 This unexpected intrusion made it necessary for the two little girls to wait, and as they stood in the partition door between the kitchen and sitting-room, leaning against the "jamb," they presented about as doleful a pair of countenances as one would run across in an average lifetime. I am perfectly honest when I say that I felt so sorry for them in their disappointment that I did not enjoy either the meal or the visitors. They—the visitors—had voracious appetites, it being my opinion then, I remember, that they must have been fasting since leaving Walla Walla three days before, and were just "coming to".

When it came time to "pass the pie" my wife cut it in six pieces, remembering the little girls. The visitors were fairly ecstatic in their praise of the pie. It had been years since they had had the pleasure of eating a pieplant pie; they had always been wonderfully partial to that kind of pie anyway; they wondered why farmers did not raise more rhubarb, since they understood it was easily grown. And, then, my wife was certainly an expert at making pies, for they had not found anything quite so good in all their travels. By this time their consignments were gone and, with knives firmly gripped in their right hands and forks in their left, they looked at those two remaining pieces with a yearning that was fierce to behold. I was certain that if I didn't invite them to have another helping they would rake the remnants in anyway, so I asked them to have another piece. I passed the plate, and unhesitatingly, without a tremor, without batting an eye, the gallant Walla Wallaians accepted the invitation,—the remainder of that pie went glimmering and the plate was empty!

At this phase of the catastrophe I looked at the children, and they rushed out of the house, screaming with all their might, and down into the raspberry "patch." There I found them, as soon as I could excuse myself, crying as if their hearts would break and, like Rachel of old, they refused to be comforted. Upon my return I told the guests one of the little girls had been stung by a yellow jacket, though that