He had the satisfaction of seeing the Pilgrim come within ten feet of them, hover there scowling for a minute or two and then retreat.

"He ain't forgot the licking I gave him," thought Billy vaingloriously, and hid a smile in the delectable softness of a wedge of cake with some kind of creamy filling.
"_I_ made that cake," announced Miss Bridger over her shoulder when she saw what he was eating.

"Do you like it as well as--chicken stew ?" Whereupon Billy murmured incoherently and wished the two fat women ten miles away.

He had not dared--he would never have dared--refer to that night, or mention chicken stew or prune pies or even dried apricots in her presence; but with her own hand she had brushed aside the veil of constraint that had hung between them.
"I wish I'd thought to bring a prune pie," he told her daringly, in his eagerness half strangling over a crumb of cake.
"Nobody wants prune pie at a picnic," declared one of the fat women sententiously.

"You might as well bring fried bacon and done with it." "Picnics," added the other and fatter woman, "iss for getting somet'ings t' eat yuh don'd haff every day at home." To point the moral she reached for a plate of fluted and iced molasses cakes.
"I _love_ prune pies," asserted Miss Bridger, and laughed at the snorts which came from either side.
Billy felt himself four inches taller just then.