But if you will return to your plate of Gloning you will see on the pie, far over on the West Side, where the scallops lap over the edge of the plate, a little spot that is burned a bit too brown. This is the home of Mrs. Phineas Doolittle, as base and servile an imitator as ever infringed on another person's monopoly. For, seeing and hearing of the success of Mrs. Deacon's pies, Mrs. Doolittle put a few extra pieces of hickory in her stove, got out her rolling-pin, and became a competitor, even to making Mr. Doolittle deliver her pies. The Deacon pies had sold readily at ten cents; three for a quarter. The Doolittle pie entered the field at eight cents; three for twenty cents.
Mrs. Deacon stood this as long as possible, and then she decided to stand it no longer—unless she had to. “Eph, you good-for-nothin' lazy animal,” she remarked to her husband one morning, as she started him on his rounds, “if you was a man, I'd send you over to talk to that Doolittle woman; but you ain't, so it ain't no use sendin' you. But if you meet up with that lazy, good-for-nothin' husband of hers, you give him a piece o' my mind, an' let him know what I think o' them what comes stealin' away my business, an' breakin' down prices, which I don't wonder at, her pies not bein' in the same class as mine, as everybody knows. If you was any good, you'd mash his head in for him, just to show her what I think of them. But there! Like as not, if you do catch up with him, you two will sit an' gossip like two old grannies, which is all you are good for, either of you.”
Being thus admonished, Eph Deacon set forth to deliver his pies.
As he reached the bridge over Mud River, Phinny Doolittle, with a basket of pies on each arm, started to cross the bridge from the opposite side, and the two men—if Mrs. Deacon will allow me—met in the middle of the bridge, and with a common impulse put down their baskets and wiped their brows.
“Howdy, Phin! Blame hot day to-day, hey?” remarked Eph.
“Howdy! Howdy, Eph!” replied Phineas; “'tis so—some smatterin' o' warmth in the air, ain't it?”
“Dunno as I know if I ever knew one much hotter,” said Eph. “How's the pie business over your way?”
“Well, now,” said Phin, “'t ain't what you'd call good, nor't ain't what you'd call bad. I dunno what I would call it, unless I'd call it 'bout fair to middlin'. How's it over your way?”