Page:Tales of Today.djvu/28

12 me, respectfully begging your pardon, that I am not of the right color for a pie."

"A Russian pie, my dear, you are a Russian pie! Don't you know that they are white? Poor child, how innocent you are!"

"But how could I be a Russian pie, madame," I rejoined, "when I was born down in the Marais in an old broken porringer?"

"Ah! the simple child! Your folks came here with the invasion, my dear; do you suppose that there are not others in the same case as you? Confide in me and don't allow yourself to worry! I mean to carry you off with me right away and show you the finest things in the world."

"And where to, dear madame, may it please you?"

"To my green palace, pretty one; and you shall see the kind of life we lead there. When you shall once have been a pie for a quarter of an hour you will never want to hear tell of anything else. There are about a hundred of us there, not those great, common, village pies who make a business of begging on the highways, but all noble and of good family, spry and slender and no larger than one's fist. There isn't one of us that has either more or less than seven black and five white spots; the rule is unalterable, and we look with contempt on all the rest of the world. It is true that you have not the black spots, but you will have no difficulty in gaining admission on account of your Russian descent. Our time is spent in two occupations: cackling and prinking ourselves. From morning until midday we prink, and from noon till night we cackle. Each of us selects a tree to perch upon, the tallest and oldest that he can find. In the