“Why this sudden access of confidence in Bradley?” queried Thaddeus. “I thought you didn’t like him?”
“Neither I did, until that Sunday he spent with us,” Bessie answered. “I’ve admired him intensely ever since. Don’t you remember, we had lemon pie for dinner—one I made myself?”
“Yes, I remember,” said Thaddeus; “but I fail to see the connection between lemon pie and Bradley. Bradley is not sour or crusty.”
“You wouldn’t have failed to see if you’d watched Mr. Bradley at dinner,” retorted Bessie. “He ate two pieces of it.”
“And just because a man eats two pieces of lemon pie prepared by your own fair hands you whirl about, and, from utterly disliking him, call him, upon the whole, one of the most admirable products of the human race?” said Thaddeus.
“Not at all,” Bessie replied, with a broad smile; “but I did admire the spirit and politeness of the man. On our way home from church in the morning we were talking about the good times children have on their little picnics, and Mr. Bradley said he never enjoyed a picnic in his life, because every one he had ever gone to was ruined by the baleful influence of lemon pie.”
Thaddeus laughed. “Then he didn’t like lemon pie?” he asked.
“No, he hated it,” said Bessie, joining in the laugh. “He added that the original receipt for it came out of Pandora’s box.”
“Poor Bradley!” cried Thaddeus, throwing his head back in a paroxysm of mirth. “Hated pie—declared his feelings—and then to be confronted by it at dinner.”
“He behaved nobly,” said Bessie. “Ate his first piece like a man, and then called for a second, like a hero, when you remarked that it was of my make.”