see the jack-o'-lantern,
just to please the children; and she must come, anyway; because it was
the funniest jack-o'-lantern there ever was, and then she told how the
funniest papa had fooled her, and then how they had got the other papas
to fool the other mothers, and they had all had the greatest fun then
you ever saw. All the time she kept putting on her things for her, and
the grandmother seemed to get quite in the notion, and she laughed a
little, and they thought she was going to enjoy it as much as anybody;
they really did, because they were all very tender of her, and they
wouldn't have scared her for anything, and everybody kept cheering her
up and telling her how much they knew she would like it, till they got
her to the pump. The little pumpkin-glory was feeling awfully proud and
self-satisfied; for it had never seen any flower or any vegetable
treated with half so much honor by human beings. It wasn't sure at first
that it was very nice to be laughed at so much, but after a while it
began to conclude that the papas and the mammas were just laughing at
the joke of the whole thing. When the old grandmother got up close,
it thought it would do something extra to please her; or else the heat
of the candle had dried it up so that it cracked without intending to.
Anyway, it tried to give a very broad grin, and all of a sudden it split
its mouth from ear to ear."

[Illustration: "'MY SAKES! IT'S COMIN' TO LIFE!'"]

"You didn't say it had any ears before," said the boy.

"No; it had them behind," said the papa; and the boy felt like giving
him just one pound; but he thought it might stop the story, and so he
let the papa go on.

"As soon as the grandmother saw it open its mouth that way she just gave
one scream, 'My sakes! It's comin' to life!' And she threw up her arms,
and she threw up her feet, and if the funniest papa hadn't been there to
catch her, and if there hadn't been forty or fifty other sons and
daughters, and grandsons and daughters, and great-grandsons and
great-granddaughters, very likely she might have fallen. As it was,
they piled round her, and kept her up; but there were so many of them
they jostled the pump, and the first thing the pumpkin-glory knew, it
fell down and burst open; and the pig that the boys had plagued, and
that had kept squealing all the time because it thought that the people
had come out to feed it, knocked the loose board off its pen, and flew
out and gobbled the pumpkin-g