THE FIRST APPLE PIE

Evening Star, Issue 23620, 5 July 1940, Page 3

THE FIRST APPLE PIE

A GOOD-NIGHT TALE The princess was looking up at the apple tree, when —plop! down fell au apple at her feetl it was not a common, ordinary; apple, or it would not have been growing tnere, but a golden pippin. “ Oh, dear!” said the princess, pick* iug it up. “ 1 hope you haven’t hurt yourself.” “They dared me to do it;” said, the apple; “the other apples, you' know. They said 1 should bo afraid to let go my stalk and jump. And now 1 have done it, and I’m sorry, for 1 someone will want to eat me, and X am not nearly ripe enough!” “1 will hide you,” said the princess. “ Where?” asked the apple. “I don’t know,” she answered. “ But it shall be somewhere where no one will 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 I Someone will find me there 1” /The princess went all over the palace, upstairs and down, looking for a safe hiding place for the apple; and at last she came to the kitchen. The chief cook was rolling out paste with a. golden rolling-pin, to .make a roly-poly pudding with golden syrup in it for the princess’s dinner. She was still looking about for a hiding place when one of the silver saucepans boiled over, and the chief cook left off rolling the paste to attend to it. The instant his back was turned the princess picked up a piece of paste and wrapped the apple up in. it. “No one will think of looking for; you there,” she whispered, • . Then she saw that the door of an. oven, out of which a cook had just taken a tray of tarts, was open, and she popped the apple in, to. hide it twice over, and went away feeling quite satisfied. “Dear me, what is thisP” asked the king at dinner, as he caught sight of a round brown thing on a dish. “T don’t 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 smell* good. Give me. a knife and I’ll see. “My dear,” said the queen, “pray; be careful. Suppose it should go oil suddenly and blow us up!” “Pooh!” said the king boldly. “ Who’s afraid?” ■ And he cut it ia two with a single stroke of the knife. “ Why, dear me,” he said, “it looks like au apple! And yet it can’t be. For how could an apple get inside ” , “ If you please, papa,” put' in the ' princess. -“ I think it must be the apple I had. It wasn’t ripe, you know, and was afraid someone would eat it. But perhaps it won’t mind so much now it is cooked, i And I think I should like a piece.” y , : , The next day, when the queen wa* asking about dinner, the king said: “Tell the chief-cook to ask the princess to be so good as. to show him how to hide some more apples.” And that is the story from long ago of how apple pies were first invented.