The Complete Short Stories of W.D. Howells (Illustrated Edition). William Dean Howells
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pores all open!’
“The funniest papa's wife she went up and kissed her, and said, ‘No, grandmother, the world's all right,’ and then she told her just how it was, and how they wanted her to come out and 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.”
“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-glory up, candle and all, and that was the end of the proud little pumpkin-glory.”
“And when the pig ate the candle it looked like the magician when he puts burning tow in his mouth,” said the boy.
“Exactly,” said the papa.
The children were both silent for a moment. Then the boy said, “This story never had any moral, I believe, papa?”
“Not a bit,” said the papa. “Unless,” he added, “the moral was that you had better not be ambitious, unless you want to come to the sad end of this proud little pumpkin-glory.”
“Why, but the good little pumpkin was eaten up, too,” said the boy.
“That's true,” the papa acknowledged.
“Well,” said the little girl, “there's a great deal of difference between being eaten by persons and eaten by pigs.”
“All the difference in the world,” said the papa; and he laughed, and ran out of the library before the boy could get at him.
Butterflyfutterby and Flutterbybutterfly
One morning when the papa was on a visit to the grandfather, the nephew and the niece came rushing into his room and got into bed with him. He pretended to be asleep, and even when they grabbed hold of him and shook him, he just let his teeth clatter, and made no sign of waking up. But they knew he was fooling, and they kept shaking him till he opened his eyes and looked round, and said, “Oh, oh! where am I?” as if he were all bewildered.
“You're in bed with us!” they shouted; and they acted as if they were afraid he would try to get away from them by the way they held on to his arms.
But he lay quite still, and he only said, “I should say you were in bed with me. It seems to be my bed.”
“It's the same thing!” said the nephew.
“How do you make that out?” asked the papa. “It’s the same thing if it’s enchantment. But if it isn't, it isn’t.”
The niece said, “What enchantment?” for she thought that would be a pretty good chance to get what they had come for.
She was perfectly delighted, and gave a joyful thrill all over when the papa said, “Oh, that's a long story.”
“Well, the longer the better, I should say; shouldn't you, brother?” she returned.
The nephew hemmed twice in his throat, and asked, drowsily, “Is it a little-pig story, or a fairy-prince story?” for he had heard from his cousins that their papa would tell you a little-pig story if he got the chance; and you had to look out and ask him which it was going to be beforehand.
“Well, I can't tell,” said the papa. “It's a fairy-prince story to begin with, but it may turn out a little-pig story before it gets to the end. It depends upon how the Prince behaves. But I'm not anxious to tell it,” and the papa put his face into the pillow and pretended to fall instantly asleep again.
“Now, brother, you see!” said the niece. “Being so particular!”
“Well, sister,” said the nephew, “it wasn't my fault. I had to ask him. You know what they said.”
“Well, I suppose we've got to wake him up all over again,” said the niece, with a little sigh; and they began to pull at the papa this way and that, but they could not budge him. As soon as they stopped, he opened his eyes.
“Now don't say, ‘Where am I?’” said the niece.
The papa could not help laughing, because that was just the very thing he was going to say. “Well, all right! What about that story? Do you want to hear it, and take your chances of its being a Prince to the end?”
“I suppose we'll have to; won't we, sister?”
“Yes, we'll leave it all to you, uncle,” said the niece; and she thought she would coax him up a little, and so she went on: “I know you won't be mean about it. Will he, brother?”
“No,” said the nephew. “I'll bet the Prince will keep a Prince all the way through. What'll you bet, sister?”
“I won't bet anything,” said the niece, and she put her arm round the papa's neck, and pressed her cheek up against his. “I'll just leave it to uncle, and if it does turn into a little-pig story, it'll be for the moral.”
The nephew was not quite sure what a moral was; but at the bottom of his heart he would just as soon have it a little-pig story as not. He had got to thinking how funny a little pig would look in a Prince's clothes, and he said, “Yes, it'll be for the moral.”
The papa was very contrary that morning. “Well,” said he, “I don't know about that. I'm not sure there's going to be any moral.”
“Oh, goody!” said the niece, and she clapped her hands in great delight. “Then it's going to be a Prince story all through!”
“If you interrupt me in that way, it's not going to be any story at all.”
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