“Hurrah! We'll have the pies after all, girls! Mother has left a pot of mince-meat in the pantry. It's frozen, but it will be all right. You trust to me. I've made pies before, and these shall not be a failure.”
The spider was heated, and enough meat for three pies put in to thaw. It thawed, naturally, the fire being extremely hot, and it presently became very thin and curious in its appearance.
“It looks like thick soup with pieces of chopped apple in it,” said Lilia to Bell, who was patting down a very tough, substantial bottom crust on a pie plate.
“We-l-l, it does!” owned the head cook, frankly; “but I suppose it will boil down or thicken up in baking. I don't like to taste it, somehow.”
“Very natural,” said Lilia, dryly. “It doesn't look 'tasty;' and, to tell the truth, it does not look at all as I've been brought up to imagine mince-meat ought to look.”
“I can't be responsible for your 'bringing up,' Lill. Please pour it in, and I'll hold the plate.”
The mixture trickled in; Bell put a very lumpy, spotted covering of dough over it, slashed a bold original design in the middle for a ventilator, and deposited the first pie in the oven with a sigh of relief.
Just at this happy moment, Betty Bean, Mrs. Winship's maid-of-all-work, walked in with a can of kerosene.
“Don't you think that's funny looking mince-meat, Betty?” asked Patty, pointing to the frying-pan.
Betty the wise looked at it one moment, and then said, with youthful certainty and disdain: “'Tain't no more mince-meat than a cat's foot.”
This was decisive, and the utterance fell like a thunder-bolt upon the kitchen-maids.
“Gracious,” cried Bell, dropping her good English and her rolling-pin at the same time. “What do you mean? It looked exactly like it before it melted. What is it, then?”
“Suet,” answered cruel Betty Bean. “Your ma chopped it and done it up in molasses for her suet plum puddins this winter. It's thick when it's cold; and when it was froze, maybe it did look like pie-meat with a good deal of apple in it; but it ain't no such thing.”
This was too much. If I am to relate truly the adventures of this half-dozen suffering little maidens, I must tell you that Bell entirely lost her sunny temper for a moment; caught up the unoffending spider filled with molasses and floating bits of suet; carried it steadily and swiftly to the back-door, hurled it into a snow-bank; slammed the door, and sat down on a flour-firkin, burying her face in the very dingy roller-towel. The girls stopped laughing.