“You’ll be permitted to take a punch in the eye, Mr. Fresh,” he said bitterly and then hastened to apologize.
His companion laughed uproariously.
“Still on your mind, Jimmy?” he inquired.
“Yes,” retorted the other; “seems like we’re hooked up to do a double act for life.”
Jimmy had a sleepless night. Every time he dropped off into a fitful slumber he was bothered by a dream in which apple pie played a central part. Once he dreamt that he was chained to a pillar in a great room and that Madame Stephano was forcing him to devour an apparently inexhaustible pie which stood on a table and which she fed him with an enormous long handled spoon. He choked so hard on one spoonful that he awoke with a start.
At the breakfast table he read Miss Slosson’s promised story in the Star. It was all that the most ambitious purveyor of publicity could desire. There was a four column headline reading:
Underneath was a big picture of a kitchen table on each side of which a woman was shown busily engaged in the culinary operations that usually accompany the creation of a pie. The bodies of these feminine figures had been sketched in by an artist, but the heads were excellent half-tone likenesses of Madame Stephano and Mrs. Jefferson Andrews, society leader.
One look at the lay-out simply added to Jimmy’s misery. After that he just had to make good. He strode out of the hotel determined to take a long walk to see if he couldn’t clarify his mental processes and get his imagination oiled up again. He was so busy with his thoughts that he paid little heed to the general direction he was taking and presently found himself in a corner of the city with which he was not familiar. It was a quiet residential section and rows of modest homes of the bungalow type lined both sides of the streets. There was a little group of shops in a stucco building on a corner and as Jimmy passed him he let his eyes drift toward them in a desultory fashion.
Presently he stopped directly in front of one which bore this legend across its front: “The Buy-A-Cake Shop—Home Made Dainties and Pastry.” A pretty girl dressed in snowy white with a cloth in her hand was lifting into the window one of the most appetizing looking pies he had ever seen. It was a single crust affair which had been baked in a deep china dish of large proportions. The pastry looked flaky enough to crumble at the touch and was a color symphony in brown. As Jimmy gazed entranced the girl set down a card in front of the pie. It read: “Mother’s Own Apple Pie.” Opportunity had knocked and Jimmy answered “present.” He rushed into the shop.