“Could you eat a piece of pineapple?” asked the woman.
Her intentions were kind, but she did not know.
Tom Pagdin groaned. He felt that any refusal of food might be a weakening of the evidence in his favour. He tried to display as much appetite as possible, and furtively letting go another trouser button, replied that he could.
The woman went to a case in the corner, and selected a fair-sized pineapple from it.
It was freshly cut from the pineapple patch in the garden in front, but its fragrance failed to awake any enthusiasm in Tom. He stowed away a couple of slices as a matter of form, and then he pleaded, in a thick voice, that he couldn’t eat any more.
“Well,” said the farmer, “I reckon if ye did, you’d be like that cow o’ mine that got into the lucerne patch yisterday.”
“Why,” asked Tom, in an anxious voice. He was not feeling well within.
“Good enough reason why,” said Jacob Cayley; “the blamed animal’s dead as a dern door-nail.”
“What happened to ’er?” queried the inflated pirate.