"Why can't they, I'd like to know?"

"Folks don't ever make pies without lard, Cephas."

"Why don't they?"

"Why, they wouldn't be nothin' more than-- You couldn't eat them
nohow if they was made so, Cephas. I dunno how the sorrel pies would
work. I never heard of anybody makin' sorrel pies. Mebbe the Injuns
did; but I dunno as they ever made pies, anyway. Mebbe the sorrel, if
it had some molasses on it for juice, wouldn't taste very bad; I
dunno; but anyway, if the sorrel did work, the other wouldn't. I
can't make pies fit to eat without any lard or any butter or anything
any way in the world, Cephas."

"I know you can make 'em without," said Cephas, and his black eyes
looked like flint. Mrs. Barnard appealed to her daughter.

"Charlotte," said she, "you tell your father that pies can't be made
fit to eat without I put somethin' in 'em for short'nin'."

"No, they can't, father," said Charlotte.

"He wants me to make sorrel pies, Charlotte," Mrs. Barnard went on,
in an injured and appealing tone which she seldom used against
Cephas. "He's been out in the field, an' picked all that sorrel," and
she pointed to a pan heaped up with little green leaves on the table,
"an' I tell him I dunno how that will work, but he wants me to make
the pie-crust without a mite of short'nin', an' I can't do that