THE FIRST APPLE PIE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 180, 1 August 1925, Page 26

THE FIRST APPLE PIE.

(By MARGARET INGLIS, aged 13 Yeare.) The Princess was looking up at, the apple tree, when—plop, down fell i apple at her feet. It was not a common, ordinary apple, or it would not have been growing there, but a golden pippin. "Oh, dear!" said the Princess, picking it up. "I hope you haven't hurt yourself ?" "They dared mc to do it," said the Apple, "the other applee, you know. They said I should be afraid to let go my stalk and jump. And now I have done it and I'm sorry, for someone will want to eat mc and I am not nearly ripe enough 1" "I will hide you," said the- Princess. "Where?" asked the Apple. "I don't know," she answered. "But| it shall be somewhere no one will ever think of looking for you." And she ran into the palace to look for a hiding place. But whenever* she opened a box or a cupboard, the Apple cried, "That won't do! Someone will find mc there!" The Princess went all over the palace, upstairs and down, looking for a safe hiding place for the apple. At last she came to the kitchen. The chief cook was rolling out pastry with a golden rolling pin to make a roly-poly pudding for the King's dinner. Suddenly an idea came to the little Princess. While the chief cook was looking for the jam to put in the pudding, the Princess cut off a piece of dough and, rolling the apple up inside it, put it hastily into the' oven for further safety, and left the room feeling quite satisfied. "Dear mc," exclaimed the King at dinner, ac he caught sight of a round brown thing on a dish. "What is this?" "I do not know, Your Majesty," was the answer. "The chief cook said he found it in the oven." "It looks rather like a baked snowball," said the King. "But it smells good. Give mc a knife and I'll see. "My dear," said the Queen, "pray be careful. Suppose it should go off suddenly and blow us up?" | "Pooh!" said the King boldly. 'Who's afraid?" And he cut it in two with one stroke of the knife. "Why, dear mc," he said, "it looks like an apple. And yet it can't be. For how could an apple get inside —" "If you please, papa," interrupted the Princess, "I think it must be the apple I had. It wasn't ripe, you know, and I was afraid someone would eat it. But perhaps it won't mind so much now it is cooked. And I think I should like a piece." The next day when the Queen was asking about dinner, the King said: "Tell the chief cook to ask the Princess to show him how to hide some more apples." And that is the etory of how appte pies were first invented.