And yet this boy would
have buttoned under his jacket an entire round pumpkin-pie. And the
pie was so well made and so dry that it was not injured in the least,
and it never hurt the boy's clothes a bit more than if it had been
inside of him instead of outside; and this boy would retire to a
secluded place and eat it with another boy, being never suspected
because he was not in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, and he
never appeared to have one about him. But he did something worse
than this. When his mother saw that pie after pie departed, she told
the family that she suspected the hired man; and the boy never said a
word, which was the meanest kind of lying. That hired man was
probably regarded with suspicion by the family to the end of his
days, and if he had been accused of robbing, they would have believed
him guilty.
I shouldn't wonder if that selectman occasionally has remorse now
about that pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up under his
jacket and sticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon his
stomach like a round and red-hot nightmare, eating into his vitals.
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