ot mind it in the least,
and just laughed.

The story was in season any time between Thanksgiving and New Years; but
the papa usually began to tell it in the early part of October, when the
farmers were getting in their pumpkins, and the children were asking
when they were going to have any squash pies, and the boy had made his
first jack-o'-lantern.

"Well," the papa said, "once there were two little pumpkin seeds, and
one was a good little pumpkin seed, and the other was bad--very proud,
and vain, and ambitious."

The papa had told them what ambitious was, and so the children did not
stop him when he came to that word; but sometimes he would stop of his
own accord, and then if they could not tell what it meant, he would
pretend that he was not going on; but he always did go on.

"Well, the farmer took both the seeds out to plant them in the
home-patch, because they were a very extra kind of seeds, and he was not
going to risk them in the cornfield, among the corn. So before he put
them in the ground, he asked each one of them what he wanted to be when
he came up, and the good little pumpkin seed said he wanted to come up a
pumpkin, and be made into a pie, and be eaten at Thanksgiving dinner;
and the bad little pumpkin seed said he wanted to come up a
morning-glory.

"'Morning-glory!' says the farmer. 'I guess you'll come up a
pumpkin-glory, first thing _you_ know,' and then he haw-hawed, and told
his son, who was helping him to plant the garden, to keep watch of that
particular hill of pumpkins, and see whether that little seed came up a
morning-glory or not; and the boy stuck a stick into the hill so he
could tell it. But one night the cow got in, and the farmer was so mad,
having to get up about one o'clock in the morning to drive the cow out,
that he pulled up the stick, without noticing, to whack her over the
back with it, and so they lost the place.

"But the two little pumpkin seeds, they knew where they were well
enough, and they lay low, and let the rain and the sun soak in and swell
them up; and then they both began to push, and by-and-by they got their
heads out of the ground, with their shells down over their eyes like
caps, and as soon as they could shake them off and look round, the bad
little pumpkin vine said to his brother:

"'Well, what are you going to do now?'

"The good little pumpkin vine said, 'Oh, I'm just going to stay here,
and grow and grow, and put out all the blossoms I can, and l