d; and I assure you that two small
persons could sit on it side by side. It seemed to have absorbed all the
goodness of the little garden, and all the sunshine that shone down on
it, and lay there a great round, golden ball, full of rich suggestions
of pumpkin-pies for weeks to come. Robby was so proud of his mammoth
vegetable that he took every one to see it, and, when frosts began to
nip, covered it up each night with an old bedquilt, tucking it round as
if the pumpkin was a well-beloved baby. The day it was gathered he would
let no one touch it but himself, and nearly broke his back tugging it
to the barn in his little wheelbarrow, with Dick and Dolly harnessed
in front to give a heave up the path. His mother promised him that the
Thanksgiving-pies should be made from it, and hinted vaguely that she
had a plan in her head which would cover the prize pumpkin and its owner
with glory.

Poor Billy had planted cucumbers, but unfortunately hoed them up and
left the pig-weed. This mistake grieved him very much for tem minutes,
then he forgot all about it, and sowed a handful of bright buttons which
he had collected, evidently thinking in his feeble mind that they
were money, and would come up and multiply, so that he might make many
quarters, as Tommy did. No one disturbed him, and he did what he liked
with his plot, which soon looked as if a series of small earthquakes
had stirred it up. When the general harvest-day came, he would have
had nothing but stones and weeds to show, if kind old Asia had not hung
half-a-dozen oranges on the dead tree he stuck up in the middle. Billy
was delighted with his crop; and no one spoiled his pleasure in the
little miracle which pity wrought for him, by making withered branches
bear strange fruit.

Stuffy had various trials with his melons; for, being impatient to taste
them, he had a solitary revel before they were ripe, and made himself so
ill, that for a day or two it seemed doubtful if he would ever eat
any more. But he pulled through it, and served up his first cantaloupe
without tasting a mouthful himself. They were excellent melons, for he
had a warm slope for them, and they ripened fast. The last and best were
lingering on the vines, and Stuffy had announced that he should sell
them to a neighbor. This disappointed the boys, who had hoped to eat
the melons themselves, and they expressed their displeasure in a new
and striking manner. Going one morning to gaze upon the three fine