The Pie and the Patty-Pan
Beatrix Potter
A cat is invited to tea by a dog, and each is too polite to say what they really think. A pie is the start of the trouble.
About the book
Beatrix Potter's 1905 comedy of manners. Ribby the cat invites Duchess, a little dog, to tea and bakes a pie. Duchess is sure it will be mouse, and she cannot bear the thought of eating mouse pie. Too polite to say so, she secretly bakes her own veal-and-ham pie and plans to swap the two in Ribby's oven while nobody is looking. Her pie has a little tin patty-pan inside to hold up the crust, and the two pie-dishes look exactly alike.
Reading it as a learner
At 2,803 words in three parts, about 26 minutes, this is one of Potter's longer stories, and the level is B2. Much of the humour sits in genteel, very polite language: punctually, disdainful, alacrity, affectionately. Notice how Duchess writes one thing in her letter and thinks another; that gap is the joke. It is a good text for learning how English politeness hides real feelings.