The Big Mogul by Joseph C. Lincoln — Read

Humble pie is not a tasty dish even to the palate accustomed to it. Foster Townsend's palate was distinctly not of that kind. Even to himself he seldom acknowledged that his judgment had been wrong, almost never to another person. Reliance Clark alone, of all his friends and acquaintances, dared tell him that he had behaved foolishly. He bore her blunt criticisms and tart reproofs with a patience the reasons for which he could scarcely have supplied under cross-examination. Her advice concerning Esther had, in previous instances, been good. In this case, although it was neither flattering nor agreeable, it seemed to at least promise a temporary way out and he resolved to take it. If it worked it was worth the brief humiliation. If it did not then he would try something else. That he would not gain his own way in the end was, of course, an impossibility. He always gained it.

Reliance had prescribed the "humble pie. " That very evening, after supper, he ate it in his niece's presence. He called her into the parlor and, as he would have said, "got down on his knees. " He frankly begged her pardon for losing his temper, for speaking to her as he had done about her visiting Bob Griffin's studio. He explained how he had learned of her doing so.