I will come very punctually, my dear Ribby,” wrote Duchess; and then at the end she added—“I hope it isn’t mouse?” Duchess started! She opened the door of the TOP oven;—out came a rich steamy flavor of veal and ham, and there stood a fine brown pie,— and through a hole in the top of the pie-crust there was a glimpse of a little tin patty-pan! The character of the cat Ribby also appears in Beatrix Potter's 1909 book The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding. Dr. Maggotty hopped so fast that Ribby had to run. It was most conspicuous. All the village could see that Ribby was fetching the doctor. Oh I didn’t put one in,’ smiled Ribby, ‘I don’t like tin things in puddings and pies. I nearly choked once on a thimble that my cousin Tabitha Twitchit had hidden in a Christmas pud!’

The Tale of the Pie and the Patty Pan features the houses, gardens and streets of the village of Sawrey, where Beatrix Potter lived, at Hill Top, her first farm. The inhabitants, however, are animals rather than people, and problems arise when Ribby the cat invites Duchess the dog to tea.I think it wants another five minutes,” said Ribby. “Just a shade longer; I will pour out the tea, while we wait. Do you take sugar, my dear Duchess?” Later the twosome sit down to tea and both wonder what the smells coming from the piesare. Are they veal and ham or mouse and bacon? They eat and Duchess asks about the patty-pan, a question that bewilders Ribby ... and they finish their meal in complete confusion, even when they are washing up! Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866. During her rather lonely childhood and later, as a young woman, she studied art and natural history. She acquired her love and knowledge of the countryside during family holidays, at first in Scotland and then in the Lake District. She started her career as children's author and illustrator in 1901 when she was thirty-five. In the years before the First World War, demand for her work was so great that she was publishing an average of two new stories a year. As she became financially independent, she was able to buy some land in the Lake District and in 1913, on her marriage to solicitor William Heelis, she moved to live there permanently. For the last thirty years of her life, writing and illustrating gave place to a second career as a sheep farmer and countryside conservationist.

Duchess started! She opened the door of the TOP oven;--out came a rich steamy flavour of veal and ham, and there stood a fine brown pie,-- and through a hole in the top of the pie-crust there was a glimpse of a little tin patty-pan! Duchess was watching and waiting for her to leave. When Ribby was out of sight she rushed into her friend’s kitchen. She opened the door of the top oven. ‘How odd!’ she thought, ‘Why hasn’t Ribby started baking her pie?’ After she has eaten most of the pie, Duchess says that she is looking under the crust for the patty-pan. Ribby says that she did not put a patty-pan in the pie and that all of her patty-pans are still in the kitchen drawer. She says that she does not put metal objects in pies or puddings because one of her relatives once choked to death on a thimble in a Christmas pudding. [3] Duchess continues to look inside the pie for the patty-pan. When she cannot find it, she concludes that she must have swallowed it. She complains that she feels ill. Ribby says that she will go to fetch the doctor, a magpie named Dr. Maggotty.I am dreadfully afraid it WILL be mouse!” said Duchess to herself—“I really couldn’t, COULDN’T eat mouse pie. And I shall have to eat it, because it is a party. And MY pie was going to be veal and ham. A pink and white pie-dish! And so is mine; just like Ribby’s dishes; they were both bought at Tabitha Twitchit’s.”