meat, or stewed apple,
or gooseberry, or plum, or blackberry; or perhaps peach, raspberry, or
preserved cherries. Only such fruits must be cooked and the pits or
stones of plums or peaches carefully removed. The edges of the dough
were wet and dexterously crimped together, so that the pie would not
open in frying.

Then when the big pan of fat on the stove was just beginning to get
smoking hot, the pies were launched gently in at one side and allowed to
sink and rise. And about that time it was well to be watchful; for there
was no telling just when a swelling, hot pie might take a fancy to enact
the role of a bomb-shell and blow the blistering hot fat on all sides.

After suffering from a bad burn on one of her wrists the previous
winter, Theodora had learned not to take chances with fried pies. She
had a face mask which Addison had made for her, from pink pasteboard,
and a pair of blue goggles for the eyes, which some member of the family
had once made use of for snow blindness. The mask as I remember wore an
irresistible grin.

When ready to begin frying two dozen pies, Theodora donned the mask and
goggles and put on a pair of old kid gloves. Then if spatters of hot fat
flew, she was none the worse;--but it was quite a sight to see her
rigged for the occasion. The goggles were of portentous size, and we
boys used to clap and cheer when she made her appearance.

As an article of diet, perhaps, fried pies could hardly be commended for
invalids; but to a boy who had been working hard, or racing about for
hours in the fresh air out of doors, they were simply delicious and went
exactly to the right spot. Few articles of food are more appetizing to
the eye than the rich doughnut brown of a fine fried pie.

That forenoon we coaxed Theodora and Ellen to fry a batch of three
dozen, and two "Jonahs;" and the girls, with some misgivings as to what
Gram would say to them for making such inroads on "pie timber," set
about it by ten o'clock. Be it said, however, that "closeness" in the
matter of daily food was not one of Gram's faults. She always laid in a
large supply of "pie timber" and was not much concerned for fear of a
shortage.

They filled half a dozen with mince-meat, half a dozen with stewed
gooseberry, and then half a dozen each, of crab apple jelly, plum, peach
and blackberry. They would not let us see what they filled the "Jonahs"
with, but we knew that it was a fearful load. Generally it was with
something sho