“I found there was a pie cut, and I thought mother wouldn't mind if I took a leetle piece,” he remarked, apologetically. He would never have dared take the pie without permission had his wife been at home. “She ain't goin' to be home till arter dinner-time, an' I began to feel kinder gone,” added Caleb. He stood by the fire, and munched the pie with a relish slightly lessened by remorse. “Don't you want nothin'” he asked of Ephraim. “Mebbe a little piece of pie wouldn't hurt you none.”
Caleb's ideas of hygienic food were primitive. He believed, as innocently as if he had lived in Eden before the Prohibition, that all food which he liked was good for him, and he applied his theory to all mankind. He had deferred to Deborah's imperious will, but he had never been able to understand why she would not allow Ephraim to eat mince-pie or anything else which his soul loved and craved.
“No, guess I don't,” Ephraim replied. He gazed moodily out of the window. “Father,” said he, suddenly.
“What say, sonny?”
“I eat some of that pie last night.”
“Mother give it to you?”
“No; I clim up on the meal-bucket, an' got it in the night.”
“You might have fell, an' then I dunno what mother'd ha' said to you,” said Caleb.
“An' I did somethin' else.”
“What else did you do?”