Archie and Daniel were two grown-up boys who lived far away from everything else, in Elbow.
One day, Papa and the whole rest of the family left on a little trip to bring some friends to the airport. Daniel and Archie stayed home since there wasn’t room for them in the truck.
“Let’s bake a pie,” suggested Daniel, who was fond of pies.
“How long until they come back?” asked Archie.
After hastily consulting the clock, his fingers, and thinking hard, Daniel announced, “Five hours.”
“Five hours! Then we definitely have time to bake a pie,” decided Archie.
Since there were no apples in the house, they went out to the orchard to pick some.
It was nice and warm outside, and Daniel fell asleep under the apple tree, after having picked five apples.
Archie started chasing the dogs and ended up having a water fight with himself.
After three hours, Daniel woke up with a start. Archie had sprayed him in the house accidentally.
“We’d better go make the pie,” Archie shouted, over the noise the dogs were making.
Daniel agreed, and they hurried to the house.
“An hour and a half till they come!” shrieked Daniel. “Oh my!”
They hurried back outside to pick apples.
“This branch is in the way something awful,” complained Daniel, as the tree branch poked a hole in the back of his shirt and he nearly feels out of the tree.
“Let’s cut it off,” suggested Archie.
They ran for Papa’s saw.
“I saw it!” cried Daniel, seeing it hanging by the lawn mower in the shed.
They grabbed it and hurried back to their tree.
Daniel cut his finger and went to wash it and bandage it. Archie finished the picking.
They started to peel the apples and cut them up.
“I think we need to make fifteen apples,” Archie decided. “Then we’ll have two pies.”
“Okay. Keep cutting,” agreed Daniel.
When the apples were ready, it was time to mix up the pie crust.
Daniel pulled out every measuring cup in the drawer as he searched for the right one.
“Aha,” he said at last. “Have you got the other ingredients, Archie-Poddle?”
Archie nodded as best he could since he had a bag of milk in his mouth.
“You’ll bite a hole in it,” said Daniel indignantly. “And it’ll leak all over the floor.”
Archie shrugged and put it on the table. “Did you want to hold it?”
“How many eggs?” asked Archie as he started for the henhouse, after having dug the egg-gathering basket from the odds-and-ends cupboard.
“I don’t know. We need the precious manuscript,” announced Daniel. “Do you know where it is?”
The ‘precious manuscript’ was the recipe.
They hunted all over for it.
They finally found it, and when the pie crust was on the pies and the pies in the oven, the decided to go plant the seeds they had gathered from all the fifteen apples they had cut.
“We need a shovel and some dirt. Where does Papa keep that again?” asked Daniel.
Archie squinted his eyes and looked around. “Maybe in the gardening shed.”
They looked everywhere.
“I found it!” Archie yelled, after several minutes of searching. “I was standing on it the whole time.”
“You’re way too big,” decided Daniel disapprovingly. “Let’s go plant the thingys.”
They did.
Then they went to wash their hands.
“There’s no more soap or hand towels,” Archie said, as he ran the water until it started to get hot.
“Oh dear. Where does Mama keep them?” said Daniel, pocking his nose in the nearest closet.
“Hey, get your head outta there,” said Archie indignantly. “That’s where I keep my diary key!”
“In the bathroom?”
“Yes!”
“You keep a diary?”
“Yes.”
“I will too,” decided Daniel, as he looked at his own handsome face in the mirror. “Hellloooo self! Okay, where are the extra notebooks and pencils?”
“Tifanie has them somewhere,” Archie replied. “Let’s go look on her desk.”
They all over the room.
“Not here. Maybe in the schoolroom,” suggested Archie, as the paraded down the hall, double-sticking-tape attached to their socks.
“Found one!” cried Daniel. “Ew, you wrote your name in it.”
“That’s my diary!” cried Archie.
“I saw my name!” cheered Daniel as he flipped through the pages.
“Gimme!”
They got all excited and chased each other around.
The schoolroom looked awful.
“THE PIES!!” Daniel screamed, and he bolted for the oven.
The pies were cooked just enough. They were both pleased.
They stood around, admiring them and pretending to dish up bowls for their family and make silly speeches about it.
Daniel laughed and laughed.
“Quit laughing and cry,” ordered Archie. “Just look at that dreadful clock.”
Daniel did. He looked at it and cried, “Papa’s COMING!”
They hurried through the house.
“He didn’t say we had to keep it perfectly clean,” said Daniel. “He just said it shouldn’t look like a pig ran through the house.”
“The schoolroom looks as if that happened and it pretty much did.”
“I don’t know about you but I am not a pig,” said Daniel indignantly.
They threw everything in the big hall closet.
“It’s a good thing this closet is so big,” said Daniel gleefully.
They slammed the door shut and leaned against it while Daniel locked it, so it wouldn’t bust open.
The familiar truck pulls into the driveway. They waved their handkerchiefs in salute.
Papa came in and looked around. “Looks very clean,” he said. Everyone came in and loves the apple pie. Daniel and Archie felt as if they were heroes.
Mama never would figure out where all the measuring cups were!
How are you guys celebrating Christmas? On Christmas Eve we ent carolling, and today we will visit my grandparents (this is Daniel writing) and we will do something special as a family on Christmas morning.
