“Search me,” said the boy inelegantly. “But I’m not worrying about it. We may not want to live here ten years from now. But, Mother,” he veered suddenly, “got any pie left from dinner? I’m hungry. May I forage?”
“Help yourself, Philip. There’s a piece of cherry pie and a slice of chocolate cake in the cellar.”
“Hurray, Mother! I’m going to see that you get an extra star in your crown some day for feeding the hungry.”
“But you spoil him,” said Aunt Rebecca as Phil went off to the cellar. “And if that boy ain’t always after pie! I mind how he used to eat pie when he was little and you brought him to see us. Not that I grudged him the pie, but I remember how he always took two pieces if he got it. And pie ain’t good for him, neither, between meals.”
“I guess it won’t hurt him,” said Mrs. Reist; “the boy’s growin’ and he has just a lunch at noon, so he gets hungry till he walks in from the trolley. Boys like pie. His father was a great hand for pie.”
“Well,” said the aunt decisively, “I would never spoiled children if I had any. But I had none.”
“Thank goodness!” Amanda breathed to herself as she went out to the porch to wait for her brother.
“Um, that pie was good,” was his verdict as he joined her. “But say, Sis, didn’t you hear the squirrels chatter in there?”
“Come on.” Amanda laughed as she swung the basket to her arm and pulled eagerly at the sleeve of the boy’s coat. “Let’s go after the flowers and forget all about her.”
Along the Crow Hill schoolhouse runs a long spur of wooded hills skirting the country road for a quarter of a mile and stretching away into denser timberland. In those woods were the familiar paths Amanda and Phil loved to traverse in search of flowers. In April, when the first warm, sunshiny days came, the ground under the dead leaves of the overshadowing oaks was carpeted with arbutus. Eager children soon found those near the crude rail fence, but Amanda and Phil followed the narrow trails to the secluded sheltered spots where the May flowers had not been touched that spring.