et them all
drop off but one, and then grow that into the biggest and fattest and
sweetest pumpkin that ever was for Thanksgiving pies.'

[Illustration: TWO LITTLE PUMPKIN SEEDS.]

"'Well, that's what I am going to do, too,' said the bad little pumpkin
vine, 'all but the pies; but I'm not going to stay here to do it. I'm
going to that fence over there, where the morning-glories were last
summer, and I'm going to show them what a pumpkin-glory is like. I'm
just going to cover myself with blossoms; and blossoms that won't shut
up, either, when the sun comes out, but 'll stay open, as if they hadn't
anything to be ashamed of, and that won't drop off the first day,
either. I noticed those morning-glories all last summer, when I was
nothing but one of the blossoms myself, and I just made up my mind that
as soon as ever I got to be a vine, I would show them a thing or two.
Maybe I _can't_ be a morning-glory, but I can be a pumpkin-glory, and I
guess that's glory enough.'

"It made the cold chills run over the good little vine to hear its
brother talk like that, and it begged him not to do it; and it began to
cry--

"What's that?" The papa stopped short, and the boy stopped whispering in
his sister's ear, and she answered:

"He said he bet it was a girl!" The tears stood in her eyes, and the boy
said:

"Well, anyway, it was _like_ a girl."

"Very well, sir!" said the papa. "And supposing it was? Which is better:
to stay quietly at home, and do your duty, and grow up, and be eaten in
a pie at Thanksgiving, or go gadding all over the garden, and climbing
fences, and everything? The good little pumpkin vine was perfectly
right, and the bad little pumpkin would have been saved a good deal if
it had minded its little sister.

"The farmer was pretty busy that summer, and after the first two or
three hoeings he had to leave the two pumpkin vines to the boy that had
helped him to plant the seed, and the boy had to go fishing so much, and
then in swimming, that he perfectly neglected them, and let them run
wild, if they wanted to; and if the good little pumpkin vine had not
been the best little pumpkin vine that ever was, it _would_ have run
wild. But it just stayed where it was, and thickened up, and covered
itself with blossoms, till it was like one mass of gold. It was very
fond of all its blossoms, and it couldn't bear hardly to think of losing
any of them; but it knew they couldn't every one grow up to be a very
large p