“Dominie Pike!” It was the usually silent Tom Orkney who spoke, and his voice had a queer trace of excitement.
Mrs. Grant turned to him. “Why, yes—the Grants claim descent from him. But what’s the matter?”
Tom went a fiery red under the gaze of the company. “I—I—oh, nothing’s the matter,” he stammered confusedly. “Only the name—it’s odd, you know, and—and——”
Mrs. Grant nodded briskly. “Does sound odd these times—‘Dominie Pike.’ And I guess he was an odd stick himself, for all he was a minister and mighty close to a great man. But you’re waiting to hear what he has to do with mince pies—the Grant kind. Well, I’ll tell you. Once he came back, nigh starved and poor as Job’s turkey after one of his trips in the woods with his Indian friends. Never heard about his chumming around with the old chiefs? Well, he did, and they thought a sight of him. But that ain’t the story I’m telling. You see, he’d been away a long time, and supplies at home were running mighty low. And his wife, she’d got most desperate. So what did she do, but take all the scraps and odds and ends she had—and they were about all she did have, I guess—and make ’em into a pie. And it turned out nearer a mince pie than any other kind. And just when it was done and cooling, and the children were licking their lips and rubbing their poor little tummies, home comes the Dominie out of the woods. And he sees that blessed pie, and he descends upon it like a wolf. And he eats it all, every crumb. And everybody’s so glad to see him alive nobody says anything to warn him that he’s putting away the family’s dinner—and supper, too, I reckon.
“And finally he pushes back the plate, and sits quiet for a minute. And then he looks at his wife, and his eye sort of twinkles. And he says in his way—and it was a good deal of a way he had, by all the stories—he says: ‘Wife, as you well know, I hold not with the pomps and vanities. But, for sustenance and nourishing qualities, yonder pastry appears to me to have possessed certain worthy qualities. So I do advise that in the event of good service by any of these children here present, they be reasonably rewarded with a pie like this one.’
“And that’s the story that has been handed down in the family; and that’s the reason we’ve set great store by our mince pies as rewards of merit. And so, when Master Sam Parker”—here she beamed on that youth—“when he did me a very good turn, I just naturally made up my mind to treat him by the Dominie Pike recipe. Sometimes I’ve wondered if he didn’t think a mince pie was a funny medal, but now he knows—and you friends of his know—why you’re facing this mince pie, and why I expect you to treat it the way the old Dominie treated his. If you leave a crumb of it, I shan’t like it one bit—so there!”
“Oh, you won’t be disappointed!” Sam cried hastily. “It—it’s a beautiful pie. And—and I like the story that goes with it,” he added after the briefest of pauses.
Mrs. Grant gave him a glance of understanding. “Well, now, I thought you might,” she said. “Boys are funny—you never can tell how things’ll strike ’em. And a pie—even a mince pie—might worry some of them, if it was a—a—well, a present, you know, and meant for sort of a good conduct badge, and so on. And if they didn’t take it right—why—why——”
Then Sam spoke with decision and emphasis. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Grant,” he said. “This bully pie is going to be taken right!”
The lady’s broad-bladed knife drove through the crust of the great pie.