I now brought forth from the cupboard a bottle of my choicest Bourbon and four glasses. The ladies consented to the tiniest sip, but, "There's nothin' stingy about me!" said Bert. "Here's to yer, Mr. Upton, and to yer house!" We set our glasses down just as Mrs. Pillig announced dinner. On the way across the hall I managed to touch the girl's hand once more. "For the second centrepiece, dear fairy," I whispered. Bert was in rare form that evening, and kept us in gales of merriment. Mrs. Pillig brought the soup and meat with anxious gravity, set the courses on the table, and then stopped to chat with Mrs. Temple, or to listen to Bert's stories. She amused me almost as much as Bert did. Bert and his wife weren't company to her, and the impersonal attitude of a servant was quite impossible for her. It was a family party with the waitress included. Miss Goodwin and I exchanged glances of amusement across the table. Then came the lemon pie. "Now there's a pie!" said Mrs. Pillig, setting it proudly before me. I picked up my mother's old silver pie knife and carefully sank it down through the two-inch mass of puffy brown méringue spangled with golden drops, the under layer of lemon-yellow body, and finally the flaky, marvellously dry and tender bottom crust. "Mrs. Pillig," said I, "pie is right!" "Marthy," said Bert, smacking his lips over the first mouthful, "if you could make a pie like this, you'd be perfect." "The creation of a pie like this," said I, "transcends the achievements of Praxiteles." "If I could make a pie like this," said Miss Goodwin, "I should resign from the dictionary and open a bakeshop." Mrs. Pillig stood in the doorway, her thin, worried face wreathed in smiles. Under her elbow I saw Peter peeping through, less curious concerning us, I fancied, than the fate of the pie. "You lose, Peter," I called. "There ain't going to be no core." At the sound of my voice Buster came squeezing into the room, and put his forepaws in my lap. Then he went around the table greeting everybody, and ended by nestling his nose against Miss Goodwin's knee. I slid back my chair, supremely content. Bert slid back his. I reached to the mantel for a box of cigars and passed one to Bert, along with a candle, for I had no lamp in the dining-room as yet, nor any candles for the table. That was a little detail we had forgotten. Bert bit off the end, and puffed contentedly. "That's some seegar," he said. "Better'n I'm used ter. Speakin' o' seegars, though, reminds me o' old Jedge Perkins, when he went to Williams College. They used ter what yer call haze in them days, an' the soph'mores, they come into the young Jedge's room to smoke him out, an' they give him a dollar an' told him to go buy pipes an' terbacker; so he went out an' come back with ninety-nine clay pipes an' a penny's worth o' terbacker, an' it pleased the soph'mores so they let him off. 'Least, that's what the Jedge said."